Wave bursts in Aquadopp

Hello

I have just arrived at my new employer and I discovered an 1MHz Aquadopp which I would like to use for wave measurements. In fact a pressure sensor would be sufficient for the data we need, but as we don't have one available we would like to use the Aquadopp in the most efficient way. So, the measurements we need are:

-significant wave height, peak period, mean sea-level every hour

-directional spectra if possible

-no currents data

My questions are:

-What settings would you recommend to have the minimum battery and memory consumption? We are in the south of Portugal (tidal range around 3 m) and the deployment depth will be between 10-20 m. (e.g. Power level HIGH; Cell size: 4m; Number of samples:512; Sampling rate: 2Hz; Interval:3600 do sound ok?)

-How can we 'suspend' the velocity measurements to prolong our deployment time?

I know that some of the questions are elementary, but this (hopefully!) makes them also easy to answer!

Thank you very much

Michalis

Dear Michalis

Congratulations on your new job

1) The number of samples should be set in accordance with the expected wave length.  If you are looking for really long waves (for example, Tp=20s),  512 second sampling sounds a little on the short side. 
4 m cells gives very stable data, you can probably reduce the cell size to 2 m and save power.

2) You can 'suspend' the wave velocity measurements and save a lot of power by reducing the cell size to a minimum (0.5m).  The downside is that the wave directional information will be less precise - sort of reducing the effective wave functionality of the system to that of a pressure sensor.

Good luck!

Best regards, Atle Lohrmann