Environmental Temperature Sensing Tow Cable

The U.S. Navy currently utilizes a number of towed systems from surface ship and submarines for sensing and communication applications. In a number of these cases, a tow cable extends either down from a surface ship or up from a submarine through the upper part of the water column where seawater temperature can be both highly variable vs. depth and dynamic in time and geographic location. Having an accurate (<0.5°C), real-time means of measuring the seawater temperature in this upper part of the water column will provide critical information to improve vulnerability assessments, as well as speed of sound values for acoustic surveillance systems. Leveraging recent advances Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems that interrogate the temperature sensing fiber and our cable development partner’s proven design and fabrication experience developing specialty cable for Navy applications, the Makai team will focus on researching and recommending solutions for the two principle objectives of the proposal effort:1.      Develop and recommend options for embedding temperature sensing fiber optics into candidate system tow cables, and 2.     Research and recommend a method of interrogating the temperature sensing fiber to provide seawater temperature measurements over the objective ranges, spatial resolutions, and update rates for each candidate application.