INTIFANTE Sea Trial 1999 (INTIFANTE'99)

Setúbal platform, 2 - 23 July 1999

PRAXIS XXI contracts
INTIMATE 2/2.1/MAR/1698/95
INFANTE 3/3.1/TPAR/2042/95

António Pascoal antonio@isr.ist.utl.pt
ISR - Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, Portugal
Emanuel F. Coelho oceanografia@hidrografico.pt
Instituto Hidrográfico, Lisboa, Portugal
Sérgio M. Jesus sjesus@ualg.pt
CINTAL - Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Justin Small rjsmall@dera.gov.uk
DERA Winfrith, United Kingdom
Yann Stephanstephan@shom.fr
CMO - SHOM, Brest, France
Michael B. Porter porter@oalib.njit.edu
NJIT, NJ Newark, USA

Brief description

The INTIFANTE'99 sea trial will take place from July 2nd to July 23rd, 1999 in the continental platform near Setúbal, west coast of Portugal. Two research vessels will be involved: the NRP ANDROMEDA and the NRP DOM CARLOS both from the Portuguese Navy and run by the Instituto Hidrografico. INTIFANTE'99 is composed of three distinct periods:
Environmental Survey from 2 to 9 July,
INFANTE'99 from 11 to 16 July,
INTIMATE'99 from 19 to 23 July.

Environmental Survey

During this period environmental data such as, CTD, geoacoustic, seismic, bathymetry and currents will be gathered in the designated area to support the acoustic measurements to be performed under INFANTE and INTIMATE. Oceanographic measurements will be correlated with satellite SAR and IR data.

INFANTE'99 Sea Trial

Objectives: this sea trial will serve for testing underwater acoustic communications systems and to test the navigation system of a remote controlled catamaran. It will involve deploying transmission modules in the sea bottom and communication either to the surface and/or to an high-frequency array of receivers.
Scenario:the NRP Andromeda will be deploying the bottom and surface modules for testing underwater communication algorithms and methods. She will also deploy the catamaran (DELFIM) to be remotely operated from board. During two days off-vertical transmissions will be performed from bottom module to a surface suspended array of receivers transmitting received signals via radio back to NRP Andromeda for monitoring, checking and backup.

Infante scenario

INTIMATE'99 Sea Trial

Objectives: this sea trial follows previous experiments (see INTIMATE'96 ) and has the objective of determining internal tides by means of acoustic tomographic measurements. Additional objectives during this sea trial will be to acquire data to support highly range-dependent source tracking and tomographic inversion with random signals (either computer generated or ship induced noise).
Scenario: NRP Andromeda will be deploying a sound source and transmitting signals to a moored vertical array. NRP DOM CARLOS will be listening to received signals via a radio link. The sound source will performing a number of geometries around the receiving array. The sound source was loaned by courtesy of SACLANT Undersea Research Centre, La Spezia, Italy.

Intimate 99 scenario

last update on August 26, 2000