NEPTUNE Regional Observatory System Design

A team from the University of Washington (UW), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Institute for Pacific Ocean Science and Technology (IPOST) of Canada is jointly developing the North East Pacific Time-series Underwater Networked Experiment (NEPTUNE). NEPTUNE is being designed as a long-lived, highly reliable underwater observatory. Its basic intent is to instrument the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, which lies just off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. NEPTUNE will use standard telecommunication fiber optic cable to provide a communication and power infrastructure. A highspeed data link (up to 1 Gb/second) and high power (at least 5 kW/node) will be available at 30 nodes spaced at approximately 100-km intervals over the tectonic plate. Each node will act as a local relay point for scientific instruments and experiments that will be deployed on the sea floor and in the water column above it. The installation of such instruments will be on a “plug and play” basis, which will allow for expansion of capability as new instruments are developed and instruments that need repair or have completed their experiments are removed. The scientific investigations enabled by the NEPTUNE observatory are very diverse. This paper presents the current design of the observatory, including descriptions of the key subsystems. Innovative approaches are being developed to provide high power, broadband communications, data archiving, and accurate timing and control. The methodology for ensuring the reliability and affordability of the observatory is discussed.