The Meishan Bay Underwater Observatory System

Abstract

Meishan bay underwater observatory system (MUO), a constant current cabled observation network for long term underwater monitoring, is designed and under construction and will be deployed in Meishan Bay, Ningbo, China, at the end of 2020. MUO system consists of several underwater water quality sensors, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) docking system, three junction boxes and their corresponding Branch-Unit (BU). Each junction box provides a total power of 360 W for the user equipment and a two-way digital communication link with a high communication rate up to 1Gbps. Constant current distribution is adopted in MUO to ensure the fault tolerance for short circuit faults. The shore station has the full control over the topology reconfiguration at both the system level and the node level. Initial instrumentation includes multi-functional sensors and an AUV, which can realize both the fixed-point and stereoscopic observation of water quality.