Design of an advanced Acoustic Tide Gauge for Tsunami monitoring

Indian Tsunami Warning System was established in 2006 by National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India. It comprises of Data Buoys with Bottom Pressure Recorders in the deep seabed and Acoustic Tide Gauge Network in the coastal areas. This paper describes design and field trials of an Advance Tide Gauge for Tsunami monitoring applications in India. The Advanced Tide Gauge measures tide, stores the data in the internal memory and transmits the real-time data via satellite telemetry to Indian Tsunami Warning Centre, Hyderabad and NIOT. The novel system is designed using networked low power embedded controllers in master and slave configuration. The state of the art system works on the ultrasonic time of flight measurement principle. The system was installed at Ennore Port, east coast of India on September 2007. Its performance was tested on September 12, 2007 with earth quake of magnitude 8.4 off Java coast.