More Than 250 USBL Acoustic Positioning Systems

iXBlue, France, is celebrating a major sales milestone for its acoustic products, more than 250 USBL systems since the introduction of POSIDONIA (very-long-range USBL) in 1999 and GAPS (pioneering single-enclosure USBL-INS) in 2004. Latest 4th-generation GAPS, with L/USBL and DP features, was delivered to SapuraAcergy, an engineering and construction contractor, specialising in deep-water installation, decommissioning, and conventional activities for the Oil&Gas industry in Asia Pacific region. POSIDONIA latest customer is Deep Ocean Search (DOS), a Survey and Recovery Company, with very deep water salvage applications, off the coast of South Africa and elsewhere.

SapuraAcergy needed USBL with higher accuracy than their old versions and inertial-acoustic systems for DP and ROV positioning. GAPS is installed on the Sapura-3000, a deepwater heavy lift and pipe-laying vessel. iXBlue ROVINS provides robust high-quality positioning, attitude sensing and data processing at a very high-rate of 200Hz, qualities critical for long layback pipelay operation. SapuraAcergy owns a number of ROVINS, MT9 beacons on top of the newly installed GAPS 4th-generation USBL.

DOS Survey needed a full solution for deep water intervention that can position simultaneously ROV, subsea tools, and a shipwreck with an accuracy of 50cm, from 300m to 5,000m water depth. The application is for deep water salvage operation. DOS solution was custom-architected using POSIDONIA, RAMSES, OCTANS-3000, PHINS-Subsea and iXBlue transponders.

iXBlue other acoustic solutions include RAMSES (Synthetic-LBL), ComMet (Metrology), and OCEANO transponder range.