IXBLUE LAUNCHES NEW GLOBAL SUBSEA POSITIONING SYSTEM NAMED CANOPUS

iXblue, a global company that provides innovative solutions devoted to navigation, positioning and underwater imaging for the Offshore Energies and Ocean Science markets, is proud to announce the launch of its new global subsea positioning system. It comprises iXblue new intelligent transponder, Canopus, the next generation of Ramses transceiver, and upgraded existing iXblue products with a new telemetry function, as well as a comprehensive supervision software suite for efficient subsea operations.

"Most iXblue products have become standard for subsea positioning operations with a range of innovative sensors and subsystems, providing performance, unequalled ease of use and open architecture. In order to complete our underwater acoustic range we have developed this new solution, Canopus.” explains Hubert Pelletier, Underwater positioning and communication division sales director. With Canopus we are now offering a global underwater positioning solution able to deliver all modes of underwater positioning including traditional full LBL. The most advanced configurations such as ASBL and sparse array combine INS and acoustics, all of which is configured and managed by the powerful global supervision software”



The Canopus intelligent subsea transponder adds the most advanced Long Baseline (LBL) capabilities to iXblue positioning and navigation solutions. Used either in sparse array mode, with the new generation of Ramses ASBL transceiver (Acoustic Synthetic BaseLine) and iXblue inertial navigation systems (INS), or in full LBL mode depending on the requirements of the operation area, Canopus provides the highest positioning accuracy with the added advantage of reducing the number of transponders.

Thanks to its hundreds of acoustic codes for interrogation and reply, Canopus can be used on the most complex fields with the guarantee to avoid any acoustic interferences. The Canopus transponder features underwater acoustic communication between transponders, transceivers and surface equipment. It embeds environmental temperature, pressure and inclinometer sensors and can be enhanced with optional sensors (Digiquartz depth sensor, sound velocity sensor and other external sensors). A data logging feature allows the recording of internal or external sensors on the internal memory (SD card).

With its extremely low power consumption, a standard battery pack allows up to 1,000,000 pings or more than 2 years battery life in listening mode. Intelligent ping management features in the supervision software further extends battery life greatly reducing, if not eliminating, beacon maintenance requirements for subsea projects.



To complement the new transponder, Canopus, a new generation of Ramses ASBL transceiver is also being introduced. This upgraded product is based on the same new electronics platform as Canopus. This new generation of Ramses thus offers the inter-product acoustic communication capabilities, the necessary environmental sensors, and the entire range of new features developed for Canopus (iXblue WiFi user interface, recording, power management, etc). Both Canopus and Ramses come with iXblue well-known MMI Interface, common to all of the company’s products and now available with WiFi for easy and fast configuration of the beacons.

In order to manage the increasing complexity of subsea operations and to offer an easy to implement solution, iXblue also introduces its new supervision software which aims to integrate the various products into a truly global approach. This new software will guide users through the planning of their operations, the deployment of all their devices, the operation of the complete system and the post-processing of all the acquired data.


Location: France