Coastal observatory as a development platform for marine instrumentation

Sea Test Base / Celadon is a non-profit organization, which offers testing facilities mainly based on a coastal non-cabled observatory, dedicated for designing, testing and qualifying marine sensors and marine instruments in real conditions. This platform can be considered as an experimental laboratory at sea, available 24/7/365 from the Internet. In a first step, we describe, analyse and compare the differences in terms of architecture and services between conventional marine cabled, non-cabled observatories and Sea Test Base facilities. In a second step, we present the results obtained with this platform to design, improve and qualify the hardware and the algorithms for a Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) modem for underwater acoustic communication. In conclusion, we present the upcoming extension of Sea Test Base, which consists of a shared open platform based on a mesh network including buoys and a pontoon, dedicated to underwater acoustic experiments at sea.