Sub-Based Nutrient Sensor

Case Study

The Nutrient Sensor is used to analyze seawater for nitrate, nitrite and ammonium using fluorescence detection.

Project Summary

Industry

Marine Science

Location

University of South Florida

Business Situation

Professors at the University of South Florida developed a sub-based nutrient sensor using a high speed flash lamp based cell, which required the help of Occam Technology Group for hardware designs.

Technical Situation

This design required hardware/firmware development and 80 MHz analog sensor conditioning, digital signal processing and validation.

Solution

Occam Technology Group performed hardware/firmware design and development of an 80 MHz synchronous flash lamp based pulse sampling system for the detection of nutrient within ocean water.

Benefits

We developed a system that utilizes a 68HC16 controller, high-speed AtoD and FIFO/FPGA for sampling and storage.

Services

  • Design engineering
  • Firmware engineering
  • Hardware Development

Synchronous Flash Lamp for the Nutrient Sensor

The sub-based nutrient sensor was developed by Dr. Rob Masserini and Dr. Kent Fanning of the University of South Florida. The core of the system is a high speed flash lamp based cell used to analyze seawater for nitrate, nitrite and ammonium using fluorescence detection. These professors approached Occam Technology Group for help creating hardware and a flash lamp to detect nutrients.

Occam Technology Group performed hardware/firmware design and development of 80 MHz analog sensor conditioning, digital signal processing and validation. The 80MHz synchronous flash lamp based pulse sampling system was designed to detect nutrients within ocean water during autonomous vehicle deployment. This system utilizes a 68HC16 controller, a high-speed AtoD and FIFO/FPGA for sampling and storage. They also developed real time FIR filtering, which was applied for noise reduction and characterization.