Group 3 (2007)

Student Members:
Timothy Butler
Douglas Caron
Daniel Forbes
Jim Mathew

Faculty Advisor:
Professor Robert Helgeland

Project Title:
GPS Tracked Surface Drifters for Estuarine Research

Project Description:
Dr. MacDonald of SMAST needs a system to track the movements of freshwater, from an estuary, into the coastal ocean as the tide ebbs. To achieve this goal, Dr. MacDonald will drop drifters into the water at the mouth of the estuary and track their movement over a period of time. In a previous attempt, he used handheld two-way radios, which had GPS capabilities. He placed one radio inside a drifter, and had another one on the deck of his research vessel. The radio, which he kept on the vessel, was capable of pinging the other radios and "asking" them where they were located. He recorded these locations and was able to record the movement of the freshwater currents. This method had a few downfalls. First, the time required to poll each drifter and record its location was fairly significant. In order to poll each drifter often enough, multiple people were required to operate the radios on the vessel. Second, the range of the handheld radios was not as far as Dr. MacDonald had hoped. Over the period of the study, many of the drifters exceeded the range of the handheld radios which caused the team to be unable to immediately retrieve the drifters. Our task is to build a new system that will allow Dr. MacDonald to record the currents and successfully retrieve the drifters for redeployment. Through conversations with Dr. MacDonald, the team has developed requirements that will form a successful design.