Waveglider Towbody Support

• High Level Requirements for Towbody Acoustic Modem Current Boost Converter
  • Supply and manage electrical power for two acoustic modems mounted in Waveglider Towbody
  • 24v @ 1.5A
  • Must not draw more than the maximum allowable current from Waveglider sub power
  • 12v @ 0.5A (or possibly 1.0A)
  • Only one acoustic modem will be used at a time
  • Initially only one transducer is mounted in the towbody at a time, should support field swap of transducer
  • In the future, when the towbody is expanded, two transducers can be mounted. Only one acoustic modem would be active at a given time.
  • Support for different output voltages, possible for an ADCP operating at 48v.
  • One serial (Rx, Tx) pair is available from communications to the WG Float, this needs to be multiplexed to up to 3 serial devices.
  • Benthos LF modem will be used to ping the Benthic Event Detector - need to support max acoustic transmit power.
  • Ping repitition rate is somewhat flexible as long as use of WG for locating BEDS is supported (1 m/s). Design goal is 10% duty cycle at max transmit power.
  • Size (TBD), for now aiming at 5" diameter x 2.5"
  • Must withstand pressure of 10m (Sub depth plus sunken towbody) or be designed to fit in sub mounted custom payload box or towbody dry box. ** ** Design for 25m depth
  • Budget constrained: Labor and Cost constrained. This effort was not initially scoped during the project proposal/budget. Target cost is $2K.
  • Should use off the shelf components where possible since labor is constrained as well.

Notes:

• Available by June. Use of readily available components or existing designs
• Liquid Robotics engineering team offered their boost converter float design so that we could re-layout and put in sub. Not available yet.