IXSEA Display Features Live Link with Vessel in the Mediterranean

Visitors to the IXSEA booth at OI08 in London recently were treated to a series of live TV shows. The company’s seafloor mapping and subsea positioning systems and solutions were in action via satellite link-up with the MINIBEX oceanographic vessel in the Mediterranean Sea.

With four live satellite link-ups daily Ixsea focused on four different systems: GAPS USBL; SHADOWS Synthetic Aperture Sonar; RAMSES the new embedded data fusion for sparse array navigation and PHINS Inertial Navigation System & DVL. The audience watched the systems in action on a large screen.

For the daily satellite link-up devoted to Shadows Synthetic Aperture Sonar Jean Schwartz managing director of Ixsea Inc. who was on the company’s booth in London and Robert Girault Ixsea’s industrial director onboard the Minibex vessel talked the audience through the deployment of Shadows and the subsequent survey.

Shadows offers real-time georeferenced wide coverage and constant resolution seabed mapping. The Synthetic Aperture Sonar antenna gives a 600-meter swath with a 15 cm constant resolution along and across track.

During the satellite link-up the audience could see Shadows forward-looking sonar filling the GAP at NADIR with a full 600-meter swath. The data was brought back to the surface through a high-speed ethernet link and processing performed in real-time by servers. The resulting mosaïc was built and displayed on screen in real-time with georeferenced images.

The combination of the images and explanations gave those attending the conference a clear understanding of Ixsea products and at the same time good entertainment value.