Remote Sensing and Data Collection in a Marine Science Application
Isaac Abraham Horn · 2006
In every field of science, research is driven by the data scientists are able to collect. Specifically in the area of marine science, researchers at the Darling Marine Center (DMC) in Walpole, Maine study the emergence events of undersea organisms. This thesis describes the development of a system integrating hardware infrastructure and existing software technology with a new software application, for the purpose of data acquisition at the DMC. In their research, a Tracor Acoustic Profiling System (TAPS), measures the water column density by utilizing sonar pulses at several different frequencies. A serial interface provides access to the systems command structure and sounding data. The software application developed, DarlGUI, provides the researchers of the DMC with an intuitive graphical user interface written entirely in the MATLAB environment. Beyond the development of DarlGUI, this thesis also discusses network technologies, data transport techniques, and web-based data distribution. The culmination of this systematic approach to the data collection needs of the DMC is a fully functional application and retrieval method that has provided approximately a year of trouble-free operation and has been implemented at other research locations. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks go to Dr. Bruce Segee for without his constant encouragement and patience this thesis could never have been completed. The author would also like to thank the remainder of his advisory committee; Dr. Mohamad Musavi and Dr. Richard Eason, for their continuous support in and outside the classroom.