Five new, innovative features for Nortek’s Signature series

The Signature Series is very flexible, making it a great tool for investigating many different aspects of ocean movement. Nortek's focus on innovation and development means the Signature Series is continuously being updated.

1. Nortek’s unique AHRS - an accurate replacement for our tilt/compass sensor

In dynamic conditions like on buoys, floats and other moving platforms, standard tilt/compass sensors do not always measure the correct value. These errors are due to acceleration forces other than gravity (i.e. the platform’s own motions).

These incorrect values have consequences for the quality of the current profile data – and it can lead to problems with derived data products such as wave and current direction.

With Nortek’s Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) installed, the heading and tilt sensors will be unaffected by acceleration due to motion. This will in turn increase the quality of buoy-based current profiler data.

2. Generating spectacular vertical velocity data with Nortek’s unique HR mode

Nortek’s new unique High-Resolution (HR) mode generates spectacular vertical velocity data, especially when used in combination with instruments moving with the flow. This option is now available for vertical beam in the Signature1000

A visualization of velocity data obtained using Nortek’s new unique High-Resolution (HR) mode.

Improvements in processing technology has allowed to increase the number of cells and overall range of the HR mode. This represents a real step forward in seeing larger turbulent scales and provides more information to turbulent analyses. In addition to drifters, the HR license is a great choice for users working in areas that are not dominated by surface waves, such as lakes and protected coastal areas.

Nortek’s Aquadopp HR instrument remains the preferred choice for applications in shallow water (1-2 m) and/or low flows (<0.5 m/s).

3. Internal averaging with QA/QC help eliminate invalid data

The big files generated by ADCPs can be too much to handle for many computers, even when the ADCP is in “average mode”.

Therefore, Nortek’s Signature instruments averages and stores the current profile to a separate file

A single QA/QC criterion is included in this first release. This criterion suppresses all raw data with a correlation lower than 50% and it is ideal to suppress data that have been collected beyond the useful range of the instrument. Nortek will expand the firmware to include more complex QC criteria in firmware releases to come.

4. Instrument synchronization over RS-485 – another unique Nortek feature

The Signature comes with great time synchronization over Ethernet, but with instrument synchronization over the RS-485 Signature users have even greater flexibility. This feature aims to simplify the integration of your current profiler or DVL into an environment that uses RS-485-addressable communication.

5. Instrument web interface

The world is moving toward web-based sensor configuration. In the latest firmware release, we have improved the look and feel of the original interface and the built-in WEB server also has a few new functions.