FSI Home

WHAT'S NEW

May 2007-FSI Announces Navy Contract for Ocean Sensors
FSI announced that it has received a $3.6 million, multi-year contract for supply of conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD) sensors from the U.S. Navy’s Naval Underwater Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport , RI . The DT-705 sensors are installed on submarines to monitor the surrounding environment. Ocean conductivity, temperature, and depth measurements provided by the sensor are also used to calculate sound velocity, salinity, and density for use in weapons targeting and submarine buoyancy determination. FSI has supplied over 150 DT-705 CTD sensors to the Navy under previous contracts. Sensors supplied under the new contract will be used to instrument Los Angeles Class submarines as well as the newer Virginia Class submarines.

FSI DT-705 CTD sensors incorporate a patented NXIC (non-external inductive conductivity) sensor design, which is not affected by proximity of external objects around the sensor. This represents an advance over earlier inductive conductivity sensors, whose conductivity readings could be affected by nearby objects. The NXIC sensor also provides robust operation and highly stable readings. The DT-705 CTD sensor is a shock-hardened design which survived extensive shock tests required for rating as Class A Naval equipment meeting Critical Item Product Specification and environmental requirements.

May 2006-FSI Receives 5th Order for the U.S. Navy's DT-705/B CTD Sensor
Falmouth Scientific, Inc. announced that it has received its 5^th quantity order from International Transducer Corporation (ITC) located in Santa Barbara, CA for the U.S. Navy’s DT-705/B. FSI, under a Teaming Agreement with ITC, designed, developed and tested the new unit, which replaces the current time-of-flight sound velocity sensor used on U.S. Navy submarines. The DT-705/B system uses a shock-hardened version of FSI’s patented non-external inductive conductivity sensor, which is now commercially available as the FSI NXIC CTD. The U.S. Navy units are rated Class A naval equipment, capable of meeting the Critical Item Product Specification and environmental requirements.

March 2006-FSI Awarded Phase II SBIR
FSI has been awarded a Phase II SBIR grant for its revolutionary Gatekeeper Buoy design. FSI has been selected by SPAWAR to develop a prototype system based upon their Phase I design. The Gatekeeper is a mooring-less communications spar buoy designed to autonomously maintain station in currents or transit from location to location. Powered by a combination of an innovative sea water activated fuel cell and solar panel, this buoy will be able to withstand 3 knot currents for up to 3 months. Designed to serve as a gateway communications device for transmitting underwater acoustically sent data over the horizon via Iridium and radio, the buoy can be outfitted with additional sensors as required.

November 2005-IGP to Represent Falmouth Scientific in Germany
FSI is pleased to announce the appointment of IGP as its exclusive representative in Germany. IGP was selected for their extensive experience and industry contacts, as well as their leasing and consulting services. Since it's inception in 1981, IGP has specialized in the provision of marine survey equipment to meet the precise needs of geophysical, hydrographic, surveying, positioning and underwater inspection applications. For more information on IGP, visit www.igp.de or contact Gerold Pinnow at tel. 49 (0) 40 37 86 800 or email: igp@igp.de.

June 2005-Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences Deploys Three Falmouth Scientific NXIC CTDs
FSI has recently shipped its NXIC CTD’s to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. In partnership with the North Pole Environmental Observatory, Bigelow Labs has recently deployed arrays of biosensors on deep-sea moorings at the geographic North Pole to study the annual cycles of plankton productivity in the central Arctic Ocean. In order to study the development of spring-summer plankton blooms and the demise of the fall-winter growth, the arrays are deployed near the bottom of the surface waters and in the nutrient-rich waters just below the surface. Bigelow Labs chose the FSI NXIC CTD because of its low power usage, robust and fast sensors, small size, and ease of operation.

These low-power NXIC CTDs were equipped with 128 MB of data logging and self-contained battery power. FSI’s NXIC CTD is a very rugged, high-accuracy CTD with direct digital output, 128 or 256 MB data logging capability.

June 2005-NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Deploys Falmouth Scientific NXIC CTDs
FSI has recently shipped its NXIC CTD’s to NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory for its Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) monitoring stations. Two of the CTD’s are deployed at North Norman’s Reef in the Bahamas, one is deployed in the Virgin Islands at the St. Croix station. Preliminary data can be viewed at www.coral.noaa.gov. Four more of the CTD’s will be deployed at La Parguera Marine Reserve, through NOAA/University of Puerto Rico’s new Caribbean Coral Reef Institute and at the Heron Island Research Station, Great Barrier Reef.

April 2005-FSI Receives Order of 100 Excell® Float CTDs from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Falmouth Scientific, recently began delivery of 100 of its Excell® Float CTDs to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The first 25 units were delivered in February, with the remainder scheduled by late May. WHOI integrates the CTDs onto Solo floats and deploys them as part of the worldwide Argo Float program. The FSI Excell® CTD provides high accuracy conductivity, temperature and pressure data while consuming less than 70mW of power. The Excell CTDs also have an on-board memory that allows them to perform pressure averages on user set intervals. This allows float data compression algorithms to enable high-speed satellite transmission of data.

FSI Papers
Click here to read recent conference papers and publications authored by FSI and our customers.

Updated 5/2/07