Design of a mobile coastal communications buoy

In response to a growing interest in networked communications at sea as well as the needs of our vital commercial fishing industry, the Northeast Consortium funded a novel research initiative to establish wireless acoustic and radio communications at sea. The platform used for this type of telemetry instrumentation was to be a buoy which could not only withstand the often harsh conditions off the northeastern coast of America (specifically, Cape Ann), but do so while exhibiting an exceptionally small response in heave and roll. A spar type buoy was designed and built at the MIT Sea Grant facility. Spars are a special type of buoy shape whose hydrostatic and hydrodynamic interactions with the sea are decoupled enough so that extreme sea conditions do not induce extreme buoy motions. Most oceanographic buoys are of the discus type, and move as the surface of the ocean does. This type of wave-following buoy would not sufficiently facilitate the requirements of the high-bandwidth wireless networking hardware, and therefore would not serve the current purpose.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Ocean Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Hendry-Brogan, Meghan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis.

• Ocean Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33584

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33584