The brief
Pablo needed to send data underwater, and commercial acoustic communication systems vary a lot in range, reliability and price. The real question was which one would work in their conditions, at a cost that made sense, rather than which looked best on paper.
What I did
- Set the yardstick. I evaluated the systems against the real operating conditions, range and reliability requirements for the integration.
- Wrote the test methods. Structured methodologies to characterise signal behaviour, sensitivity to the environment and reliability across different configurations.
- Turned results into a decision. I pulled everything into a feasibility and cost comparison, which drove the vendor choice and the deployment plan.
How it went
This was as much a purchasing decision as a technical one, so the comparison put cost next to range and reliability for each system.