Ocean Observing Systems For Science & Industry

CSnet operates and maintains an Ocean Observing System which provides scientists, oceanographers, environmentalists, and engineers a continuous 24/7 window into the life, chemistry, and movements of the ocean while working from their offices or laboratories. CSnet offers an end-to-end solution, providing technical assistance in the design, construction, site selection and survey, governmental permitting, environmental impact assessment, and marine equipment installation.

Offshore Communications Backbone (OCB)

The Offshore Communications Backbone (OCB) is a 2000 meter deep modular seafloor communications network that is directly connected to the internet. Our clients can provide and control their own subsea instruments and data outputs, or CSnet can provide a suite of full water column instruments with data forwarded directly to our clients’ onshore facilities.

Architecture

The CSnet OCB consists of a network of subsea nodes and associated instrument ports that are connected via powered submarine fiber optic cable segments. The OCB design makes it suitable for both scientific and commercial applications. The current OCB baseline allows for a full SONET fault tolerant ring architecture by connecting to the eastern and western legs of the POSEIDON System.

Expandability

Our current installation, located off of Cyprus, consists of 5 seafloor nodes interfaced via 140 km of powered fiber optic cable segments. Each node is configured with 6 powered wet-mate connections for instrument installations. The OCB is linked to a fully staffed network operations center for real time quality control, information processing, and web based forwarding of data to end users. Seafloor nodes are expandable with up to 9 additional ports (15 total per node), and can be extended up to a 170 km step out distance.

Proven Design

CSnet’s focus on the individual component and end to end networked testing of power and communications functionality during the buildup and pre-deployment phases ensures a cost effective and successful installation. The OCB represents a proven network module that has been designed, constructed and tested which minimizes upstart time and cost. Each OCB module is expandable to accommodate both large and small applications at a predictable cost.

Metocean Data Acquisition

CSnet provides metocean data in both near real-time streaming, or from historical data sets, some of which span up to 10 years of data collection. We can offer in-situ, 24/7 metocean sensing of wind, current, wave, and other oceanographic/hydrographic data streams. This data can be used for regulatory and permitting requirements, or for spill response modeling, planning and operations.