The importance of indigenous marine sensors and systems in maritime technologies

Marine Sensors and Instruments are vital elements for any type of maritime explorations. The use of conventional platforms like larger ships have been changed to small boats and Remotely Operable Vehicles (RoV’s) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AuVs) which require miniaturized sensors which can obtain maximum data with limited battery power. Generally, oceanographic parameters include temperature, salinity (Salinometer, CTD), speed and direction of ocean currents (electromagnetic or ultrasonic current meters), wave height and periods, tidal height and period, sound velocity, bathymetry or ocean depth measurements using Echo Sounders or depth recorders (Srinivasan in J Pure Appl Phys 27:491–510, 1989). Most of the sensors are being imported even now in India though a lot of efforts have been made by various groups over the past six decades. The main reason is to compete with the accuracies required by the international community for comparison of the data. Marine Sensor System group in National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) is focussed on the development of wide band, low frequency, high power under water transducers and Sonar systems which is a value added technology development for civilian applications for shallow water operations. Another area is underwater communication technology development for data transfer and voice communication. Now the institute has technology developmental programs for Deep Ocean Mission (DoM) and Blue Economy. In this paper, a brief review of the overall developments carried out by NIOT and the requirements of future endeavours towards the Ocean decade is presented.