Serial ASCII Instrumentation Loop for Marine Research Application

SAIL is the acronym for a proposed standard for the marine research community, entitled "Serial ASCII Instrumentation Loop." This standard has other instrumentation applications, but it has been proposed as one candidate specifically for intravessel digital data communications from sensors that monitor vessel parameters (position, speed, heading, etc.). Standard design criteria generally do not exist in the marine research community. Simply stated, standards are the root words to a language for technical information transfer. Until standards can be developed, disseminated, and accepted throughout the community, common and frustrating difficulties will remain formidable and impede cooperative research efforts. The prime benefit of an implemented data communications standard is to enable scientific parties to have ready access to vessel parameters which complement the data from the research program. Such a data-access technique is contained in the SAIL standard, and pertinent features of the standard are briefly described along with some hardware implementation.