Development of a “Synchronization Trigger” for the Spanish Oceanographic Ships Based on an Embedded Real-Time Java System

It is indispensable to have time synchronization and event/pulse generation systems on board oceanographic research vessels to control the data acquisition rate of sensors and equipment. This paper presents a pulse generation system based on the aJ-100 real-time Java embedded system with the capability of being integrated into a general-purpose acquisition system of the BIO Hesperides research vessel named LabVir. In the development of this system, a platform with reduced size and weight and networking technology for system control and data access was used, making its integration easy in any research vessel. Furthermore, a logic design for the event generation was implemented, making the overall system adaptable to any future needs.