ACubes — a hydroacoustics construction kit

ACubes (A3S, "Acoustic Cubes") is a construction kit — a set of elementary functional modules for building mock-ups of virtually any type of hydroacoustic navigation and communication system, from the simplest modems and antenna arrays to USBL and long-baseline navigation systems. The "cubes" take care of converting a digital signal into a hydroacoustic one and back, leaving the user free to develop application-level algorithms — navigation, error-correction coding, network protocols.

Available for purchase are the A3T transmitter module (emits pulses of a fixed frequency and duration on a digital input) and the A3R receiver module (detects these pulses and changes the state of a digital output). One transmitter and up to 12 A3R receivers can be combined into a stack on a shared bus; a receiver and a transmitter can also work as a pair sharing a single antenna, forming a transceiver, and connecting a receiver's output to a transmitter's input produces a responder beacon that works on the echo principle, measuring range from the signal propagation time. Three standard kits are supplied for USBL/SBL, LBL (including a WAYU system analog) and VLBL scenarios.

The line is designed to grow: the manufacturer plans A3TC/A3RC and A3T2/A3R2 modules, plus an A3AM amplitude modulator/demodulator for voice signals.