Airborne eXpendable Buoy Processing System (AXBPS)

Overview

The Airborne eXpendable Buoy Processing System (AXBPS) is a software/hardware system capable of receiving and quality controlling Airborne eXpendable BathyThermograph (AXBT), Airborne eXpendable Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (AXCTD), and Airborne eXpendable Current Profiler (AXCP) profiles. AXBPS is composed of two independent subsystems: the AXBPS Data Acquisition System, which receives telemetered raw temperature, salinity, and/or current profiles with no external hardware other than a VHF radio receiver, and the AXBPS Profile Editing System, which quality controls all three profile types.

The Airborne eXpendable Buoy Processing System (AXBPS) Data Acquisition System is designed to receive pulse code modulated (PCM) audio data containing an AXBT, AXCTD, or AXCP signal and produce a viable temperature-, salinity-, and/or current-depth profiles from that data. AXBPS is compatible with WiNRADIO software-defined radio receivers, which demodulate a VHF signal transmitted from an air-launched probe and export the resulting PCM data to AXBPS for processing. It was also developed with the intent to simplify the integration of additional radio receiver types in the future. Additionally, previously recorded WAV files can be imported into AXBPS to decode the transmitted profile(s). AXBPS integrates the signal processing capabilities of the MK-21 or similar hardware and audio recorders as software-defined functions, reducing the equipment necessary to launch and process data from AXBTs, AXCTDs, and AXCPs. More information about the AXBPS Data Acquisition System is available here.

The Airborne eXpendable Buoy Processing System (AXBPS) Profile Editing System is meant to enable users to quality control AXBT temperature-depth profiles, AXCTD temperature- and salinity-depth profiles and AXCP temperature-depth and current-depth profiles, guided by an automated quality control algorithm and further aided by temperature/salinity climatology and bathymetry data for the region of interest to reduce the background oceanographic knowledge necessary on the part of the user. More information about the AXBPS Profile Editing System is available here.

An article (Densmore et al., 2021) on the AXBT component of the Data Acquisition System as well as the autoQC algorithm was published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. A more comprehensive description of the development and testing of the AXBT components of ARES is available here. A python-based cli versions of the AXBT, AXCTD, and AXCP processors integrated in AXBPS (with an example python script demonstrating how to use each processor) is available on github. For a full description of AXBPS, including installation, operation, and troubleshooting instructions, as well as an overview of operating principles, please view the User Manual.

Download

The recommended method to install AXBPS uses the standalone executable installer (AXBPS_win64_installer.exe), which does not require installation of Python or any additional modules/dependencies or any other data files. Detailed installation instructions can be found here. The source code for AXBPS is available on Github. However, the github repository does not include necessary data files required for AXBPS to run via Python. Those files are available under the "AXBPS Compressed Data" entry below, and should be added to the cloned github repository following the guidance in the installation guide or user manual. To download files, right click the appropriate link and select "Save Link As".

Description and Link Date Updated
AXBPS Executable Installer (Windows x64) 20 August 2022
AXBPS Compressed Data 5 August 2022
User Manual 7 August 2022
Current ARES Installer (v3.5, Windows x64) 26 September 2022