APPLICATIONS AND PERFORMANCE OF RADIOACOUSTIC POSITIONING AND TELEMETRY (RAPT) SYSTEMS

RAPT was developed to use systems of semi-autonomous buoys with hydrop hones and radio transmitters to continuously monitor the positions and performance of multiple objects, animals and/or people tagged with mi niature acoustic transmitters under water. Buoys communicate signal ar rival times to share, ship or aircraft based computers which triangula te positions in three dimensions and decode telemetered information su ch as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, salinity and light en coded in pulse intervals. It is the only way of tracking with high-res olution (meters) at intermediate ranges (10's-1000's of meters) in sea water and the most accurate in freshwater. The technique is powerful a nd flexible with wide application, but is constrained by tradeoffs bet ween electrical power and signal accuracy under extreme conditions. Te chnological solutions to some of these constraints are possible, but o ptimization of information gathering, in many cases, simply requires m ore experience and can be achieved by software, information sharing an d a cadre of trained personnel.