Metrological control for autonomous marine environment monitoring system

The authors propose to present the metrological qualification approach used by IFREMER for the MAREL system. This approach is entirely based on work performed by metrological laboratory and by a testing laboratory. It does not require any in situ metrological qualification and so reduces the costs produced by such operations particularly if the system is based on a buoy with difficult access. The proposed approach naturally ensures the credibility of the system. Every factor necessary to succeed in such an enterprise has been used: Metrology of the sensors, metrology of the system and metrological quality assurance. The results obtained are promising, the first 16 months of working of the MAREL system demonstrate that from a metrological point of view the system is behaving as the qualification has predicted. Thus the metrological drift remains within the specifications provided