Development and Implementation of an Integrated Metocean Monitoring Infrastructure at the Pohang Maritime Unmanned Systems Testbed, Republic of Korea

The rapid advancement of unmanned maritime systems (UMS) necessitates rigorous validation protocols within complex and non-linear marine environments. This study presents the comprehensive development and operational framework of an integrated metocean monitoring system at the at the Pohang Maritime Unmanned Systems Testbed, Republic of Korea. The system is specifically engineered to generate high-fidelity environmental datasets, which are pivotal for the systematic performance validation and reliability assessment of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). To bridge the gap between controlled simulations and highly dynamic real-sea conditions, an integrated observation infrastructure comprising four core components has been established to capture multi-scale environmental variables.

Specifically, the infrastructure incorporates four synergistic core components: (1) onshore meteorological stations equipped with high-precision sensors to collect critical atmospheric parameters, including wind vectors, precipitation, and solar radiation; (2) offshore observation buoys deployed at strategic locations to monitor real-time wave dynamics, including significant wave height and sea surface temperature (SST); (3) bottom-mounted Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) utilized to acquire high-resolution vertical profiles of current velocity and direction across the water column, alongside hydrostatic pressure and wave parameters; and (4) mobile observation platforms integrated with vessel-mounted ADCP, conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors for high-resolution vertical profiling, and an automatic weather station (AWS). These mobile units are instrumental for ensuring spatial flexibility and mitigate observational gaps that stationary sensors, thereby achieving a holistic 3D characterization of the marine environment.

Crucially, all observation data from these multifaceted platforms are synchronized and transmitted in real-time to a centralized onshore integrated control system via high-speed telemetry. This unified framework facilitates real-time situational awareness, enabling operators to visualize and analyze metocean trends instantaneously. By quantifying precise sea state levels and providing continuous environmental telemetry, the infrastructure significantly enhances operational safety during field trials. This allows for proactive risk mitigation and informed decision-making against hazardous maritime conditions. Ultimately, this multidimensional system facilitates the characterization of environmental variables, enabling a rigorous analysis of the operational envelopes and autonomous navigation efficiency of unmanned systems. This infrastructure is expected to serve as a cornerstone for the international standardization of marine unmanned technologies and the development of extensive empirical databases for machine learning-based motion control algorithms.