Higgler,
You can find out much more about submarine construction, operation, and history from books such as "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Submarines". There you will find that American hulls are HY80 or HY100 steel, and that during normal operations the hull and the conning tower are almost...
The coating varies between the classes of submarines as well as across the sub itself. For some subs, the only coating you will find is paint. Others will have some type of rubber against parts of the steel hull, which is interrupted by numerous fittings, the sail, and the casing.
I am curious...
Most underwater optical imaging and communications systems use green laser - about 530 nm. Under ideal conditions you can exceed 1000 m range, but high turbidity can cut range to a fraction of this. In addition to choosing the laser itself, you need to select a light detector - for underwater...
I've always found that other considerations (desired antenna height, field of view, mast structure weight limits, allowance for crane motion, limiting radhaz to crew, keeping rigging away from rotating antennas, etc) limit antenna placement so much that you just live with the fact that you...
Radio communications IS possible with submerged antennas but usually impractical for non-military use; a 2.4 GHz device certainly won't work. If you can use a floating wire antenna or better yet a whip antenna atop a float tethered to each of your underwater objects then the bluesoft product can...
One of the best resources I've stumbled across is at http://www.telexwireless.com/wlanfaq.htm, which gives advice and links on all the topics you've mentioned. This is primarily aimed at unlicensed 2.4 GHz 802.11b point to multipoint systems but is generally applicable to most systems between...
If you want to go with a versatile but finished product rather than individual chips and can spend several hundred dollars on it, then try industrial monitoring devices such as DeviceNet, National Instrument's Field Bus or even one of their DAQ cards (www.ni.com), or DataForth modules. These all...
The presence of obstacles could not only limit laser, (most) acoustic, IR, and radar sensors, it would also create a false alarm problem - how would the robot discriminate between an obstacle and the other robot? You can avoid these problems with GPS.
Single channel GPS receivers are now...
Joseph:
I am working on a similar application but in a different band. Examples of what you need can be found at:
http://www.ydi.com/
http://www.rfamplifiers.com/wlanamps.html/
http://www.c-spec.com/pages/prod/amp24i.html
http://www.teletronics.com/tii/products/amplifiers.html
What...
You have discovered why most electric-driven autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) use oil compensated brushless DC motors for thrusters. One of several manufacturers of brushless DC motors that has been used in ROVs can be found at...
