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www.seadiscovery.com Marine Technology Reporter 55 MARPORT Canada St. John’s, NL, Canada Tel: 709.757.5757 Email: gleyte@ marport.com www.marport.com Chairman of the Board: Derrick Rowe CEO & President: Karl Kenny Executive Vice-President, Sales: Oskar Axelsson Vice-President, Military & Offshore: Michael Harvey Vice-President, Software Engineering: Anthony Paul Vice-President, Research & Development: Neil Riggs Annual sales: (expected) $18.4m # Employees: 115 Marport is a pioneering developer of Software Defined Sonar (SDS) and a leader in the design and manufacture of high performance subsea acoustic solutions. Applications include underwater sensing, processing, communications and visualization for commercial fish- eries, offshore energy, ocean science and defense. In 2009 Marport acquired C-Tech Ltd., a leading supplier of advanced sonars for underwater defense, including anti- submarine warfare, mine countermeasures and harbor sur- veillance. This acquisition positioned Marport as Canada’s largest underwater acoustics technology compa- ny. In 2009 Marport signed a Memorandum of Understanding with General Dynamics Canada, a pioneer in the development of military acoustics processing and display solutions, setting the stage for the joint develop- ment and marketing of next generation underwater acoustic products to support underwater military Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) mis- sions. This partnership positioned Marport to address increasing global market demand for underwater ISR sys- tems as militaries around the world rebuild and retool their fleets. GDC has also awarded Marport a multi-year research and development contract for new naval sonar products that leverage Marport’s SDS technology. Marport obtained funding from the Canadian Government to assist in the development of a new class of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Marport has been awarded a contract for delivery of two AUVs; an SQX-500 depth rated to 500m and an SQX-3000 depth rated up to 3,000m. Both units are to be purchased by an international geodetic survey company. The AUV will utilize a combination of Marport’s revolutionary SDS technology, underwater modem and 3D acoustic image processing and display software. Marport develops and manufactures software defined acoustic products for subsea applications and is a pioneer- ing developer of Software Defined Sonar (SDS), an adap- tive future-proof solution for highly flexible underwater detection, sensing and communications systems. SDS replaces conventional, hard- ware based sonar systems with one common platform composed of programmable com- ponents that are controlled by software. SDS performs significant amounts of signal processing in high-speed reprogrammable devices such as field programmable gate arrays and general purpose processors. With SDS technology, a single hardware platform handles many different sonar functions – the platform is easily reconfigured to change its specific function as needed. A user can change functionality or add optional features to a piece of equipment by changing the software, not the hardware. Functionality is altered by downloading new software directly to the sensor via Bluetooth download and can be done even while at sea. This technology pro- vides Marport customers with flexible, reconfigurable platforms that provide greater accuracy and functionality with increased efficiency, greater affordability, lower power consumption, over-the-air bug fixes and upgrades and full versatility. Other SDS products currently under develop- ment include: • Suite of Autonomous Vehicles for defence and explo- ration applications • Swath Bathymetry Imaging Sonar • Underwater high speed wireless acoustic modem • Beam echosounder • Single beam echosounder • CHIRP ES echosounder • Doppler current profiler • AquaPix 3D acoustic imaging sonar CEO Karl Kenny with members of Marport’s UUV team. Inset: UUV in the NRC IOT tank MTR 100
