Keith von der Heydt
John Kemp
James F. Lynch
Woods Hole Oceanogr. Inst., Woods Hole, MA 02543
Ching-Sang Chiu
James Miller
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943
Acoustic phased arrays are of great utility in various applications for acoustical oceanography and ocean acoustics, such as tomography and matched-field processing. Internal storage of data from such arrays both limits the total amount of data taken (usually to a few gigabytes) and deprives the user of real-time advantages, such as remote control of the array's sampling, much greater data capacity, and real-time evaluation and processing. To ensure high bandwidth, radio telemetry to a ship or shore station is required. In August 1992, a collaboration of WHOI and NPS researchers deployed a prototype telemetered vertical line array (VLA) system using a radio link at 902--928 MHz with a one nautical mile effective range. A local area network (LAN) ethernet link was established between the surface buoy computer controlling the array and the shipboard computer ensuring rapid, error-free communications. This and other details of how this technology is implemented, other advantages and disadvantages, and the future of such technology will be discussed. [Work supported by ONR.]