Software infrastructure and applications for the Monterey Ocean Observing System: design and implementation

MBARI's MOOS moored network is a state-of-the-art ocean observatory for interdisciplinary science, consisting of interconnected "host nodes" on the ocean surface, midwater, and seafloor. Each node can accommodate a wide variety of instruments. We describe some of the challenges posed by the system's functional requirements, and how those challenges are addressed by the design of the system's onboard hardware and software. Integration of diverse instruments and their protocols into the network poses major system integration and maintenance challenges, particularly in the areas of instrument installation and control, data retrieval, and data interpretation. All of these functions must be reliably performed in an often hostile environment on networked at-sea platforms that are generally power limited. We describe a distributed software architecture and implementation that addresses these challenges