Nexus 2 USBL System Launched at Oceanology 2016

Applied Acoustic Engineering (AAE) chose this year’s Oceanology Conference & Exhibition in London (UK) to launch several new products including a greatly enhanced USBL system.  Nexus 2  is the second generation 2- way digital system designed and produced by the award winning UK based company that takes the performance and features of the popular Nexus USBL system to a new level.  Developed with an emphasis on far greater accuracy whilst positioning over an extended operational range, the Nexus 2 provides a reliable and secure acoustic link with an extremely low susceptibility to interference.

Fundamental to the Nexus 2 system is AAE’s Sigma 2 digital acoustic coding, a proprietary set of bi-directional spread spectrum acoustic protocols devised by the company’s in-house R & D team. These protocols working with a complementary transducer design mean that positional accuracies of up to 0.15% slant range have been achieved.

Alongside the USBL development, AAE also showcased a new series of acoustic beacons to complement the Nexus 2.  Based on the same Sigma 2 protocols, the 1100 Series Beacon has evolved to provide more accurate positioning, very long battery life and now has the addition of data telemetry options when used with the Nexus 2.  This feature allows the complete system to operate as a combined positioning and data transfer package, a combination that can prove valuable for use with subsea instrumentation or in environmental monitoring applications.

For standard positioning and tracking tasks, Nexus 2 is also compatible with AAE’s 1000 Series beacons, 1200A and 1300A Micro beacons, and some of the older AAE ‘tone’ products (900 Series).