Low-cost Mooring Location Beacon for Coastal Applications

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Subsurface mooring beacons are used to provide notifications and assist in locating moored assets that have surfaced and are free drifting so that they can be recovered. Their nominal design is driven by the requirements for offshore use where they need to survive extreme depths and utilize satellite constellations for communication and geo-location. These beacons serve their purpose well, but their high cost makes them impractical for low budget or high unit count projects. Toyon Research aims to make a variant of the subsurface mooring beacon that is tailored for coastal applications with a goal of significantly reduced cost. By limiting the maximum depth and potentially utilizing on-shore wireless infrastructure the per-unit fabrication and component costs can be reduced. It will include standard functionality such as surface detection, fast geo-location and transmission, and extended battery lifetime. The low price-point of this new class of subsurface mooring beacon will enable its adoption for a wide variety of projects in coastal and inland waterway environments.SUMMARY OF ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The anticipated result of the proposed Phase I is a functional proof-of-concept system that will be used for testing and performance characterization in the field. The Phase II effort will focus on testing, refining, and maturing the design. At the end of the Phase II effort when the final version of the beacon has been proven in the field, with NOAA's agreement, Toyon will open source the project. This will entail hardware design, mechanical design, embedded processor software, and documentation. The documentation will include all details needed for a third party to successfully build and deploy the coastal beacons. This also opens up the possibility of the development community modifying the design for continued refinement after Toyon's effort has ended.