Low-cost Mooring Location Beacon for Coastal Applications

Subsurface mooring beacons are used to provide notifications and assist in locating moored assets that have surfaced and are free drifting. Their nominal design is driven by the requirements for offshore use where they need to survive extreme depths and remote deployment, most often using satellite constellations for communication and geo-location. Existing beacons serve their purpose well, but their high cost makes them impractical for low budget or high unit count projects. Toyon Research Corp. aims to produce a subsurface mooring beacon that is tailored for coastal applications with a goal of significantly reduced cost. By limiting the maximum depth and using commercial-off-the-shelf components, the beacon unit costs can be reduced. Toyon’s solution includes standard functionality such as surface detection, fast geo-location and transmission, as well as 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.