Underwater wireless product reaches launch

Underwater wireless modem technology described in Eureka’s November 2005 feature article (“Radio waves transmit information underwater”) has just reached the market in the form of a commercial product. The S1510 Underwater Radio Modem, launched at yesterday’s Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Showcase, is designed to work at 10m depth and has a working range of 50m. Ron Marquis, Wireless Fibre Systems business development manager, told Eureka: “We have been talking to the Environment Agency, about monitoring reporting tasks where they cannot get permission to run cables – and where an acoustic link would require a repeater buoy that might be struck by river or canal traffic.” The devices seen by Eureka are ruggedly engineered, available for evaluation, and according to Marquis, “They should run for a couple of years on two ‘D’ cells,” he says. “Units are currently on trial on a test site on the River Tees.”