| Description: | The Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) is the national oceanographic institution. Just like in Radio Astronomy, specialized instrumentation is needed for oceanographic research. At the NIOZ, the Marine Electronics Department specializes in electronics development for marine research equipment. Recently, they developed a sensor to measure sediment movement. This sensor periodically measures the height of the sediment and stores the data on a memory card. When an operator visits the sensor, the measured data is transferred to a PC over a Wi-Fi radio link.
However, the engineers at NIOZ found out that radio waves behave quite different from the water waves they are used to. They could not get the radio link to work and turned to ASTRON. At the ASTRON RadioLab, we performed some measurements and isolated the problem. With some quick fixes, we managed to demonstrate a proof of concept to improve the stability of the link, to great satisfaction of our NIOZ colleagues. Fascinated by RF technology, two people from NIOZ participated in the March edition of the ASTRON RF course. |
