Transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice

[n2doc]

You can listen to the underwater sound of the Antarctic Ocean with a delay of a few seconds here.


Providing an acoustic live stream of the Antarctic underwater soundscape is a formidable challange. After all, more than 15000 km lie between Antarctica and our institute in Germany. Underwater sound is recorded by means of two hydrophones by PALAOA, an autonomous, wind and solar powered observatory located on the Ekström ice shelf (Boebel et al., 2006). The data stream is transmitted via wireless LAN from PALAOA to the German Neumayer Base. From there, a permanent satellite link transmits the data to the AWI in Germany.

A constant hiss pervading the signal is partly due to electronic noise as we push the hydrophone amplifiers to their limits, but also the natural ocean background noise made audible here through the use of ultra sensitive hydrophones. Additional broad band noise caused by wind, waves and currents adds to it on occasion. There a three sources of click-like interference: switching relais, electrostatic discharges caused by snow drift, and sferics produced by thunderstorms ten thousands of kilometers away. Due to the limited bandwith of the satellite link, jamming of the WLAN link due to storms, or energy shortage, the connection might temporarily be down or scrammed. In this case, please dial in later!

Most Recent Spectrogram


links here:

http://www.awi.de/en/research/new_technologies/marine_observing_systems/ocean_acoustics/palaoa/palaoa_livestream/

[niyad]

1. k and r--thank you for sharing this with us.