Issue 8, March 2009

VEMCO Evolves Technology: Staying Ahead of Global Demand

VEMCO's New Enhanced Coding Techniques and Worldwide
Code Map Provide Millions of Unique Pinger IDs and Tens of
Thousands of Sensor IDs

Since VEMCO's inception, our philosophy has been to create robust, scalable technology with the goal of providing marine biologists and fish researchers with affordable, reliable equipment for gathering and sharing data. Easy to deploy and operate, and suitable for almost any environment, VEMCO acoustic telemetry technology has enabled the development of a worldwide global network of passive monitoring arrays.

Over the years, we have sought to continually evolve our technology to address increasing demand for acoustic telemetry products. In 1997, we launched the first coded receiver, the VR1, with just a few hundred pinger IDs. The hugely popular VR2 was introduced in 1999 with support for several thousand pinger IDs and hundreds of sensor IDs. In 2007, we launched the "future ready" VR2W and added support for tens of thousands of pinger IDs. Ongoing evolution of our products has enabled us to stay ahead of demand.

However, with the rapid growth in the use of VEMCO acoustic telemetry equipment by researchers worldwide and the increasing proliferation of networked arrays of VEMCO receivers, we are predicting that all currently available VEMCO pinger IDs will be exhausted within the next two years. In the case of sensor tags, we have had to reuse IDs many times over to meet the demand.

Potential issues of ID duplication with sensor tags are avoided through vast geographic separation, study variance and natural tag life cessation along with the addition of a unique pinger ID on each sensor tag. This requires us to be ever vigilant and meticulous about managing and maintaining the VEMCO coded tag database to ensure we protect the integrity of our customers' research studies. However, with the significant growth in the deployment of sensor tags in recent years, and the addition of new sensor transmitters, such as the V9AP accelerometer tag, our ability to provide unambiguous VEMCO sensor tag IDs has become increasingly difficult in many locations.

To address this, we are introducing tags with new and enhanced coding techniques and a new Worldwide Code Map that will provide millions of pinger IDs and tens of thousands of unique sensor transmitter IDs. Our new Worldwide Code Map is fully backwards compatible and will enable VEMCO receivers to detect all currently active VEMCO tags. Our new coding techniques have also implemented enhanced error checking which has significantly reduced false positive detections thereby easing data analysis.

We anticipate that these new coding techniques and code map will allow us to provide sufficient unique IDs to satisfy the growing demand for acoustic transmitters worldwide and support the increasing network of collaborative arrays of VEMCO receivers for many years to come.

We will be phasing in the new Worldwide Code Map throughout 2009 and 2010 and will be able to begin selling the new coded tag types this year to customers as they complete their upgrades.

What does this mean for users with deployed receivers?

Do you have to convert your VR2s to VR2Ws?

Whether or not you choose to convert your VR2s to VR2Ws depends primarily on your research goals and study objectives. Along with its ability to handle the new advanced coding techniques allowing you to leverage even more deployed arrays and share data with other researchers, the VR2W boasts numerous enhancements over the VR2 such as state-of-the-art electronics, increased memory (stores up to a million detections) and Bluetooth® wireless technology.

Converting to VR2Ws also allows you to economically conduct underwater acoustic fine scale positioning studies with the VR2W Positioning System (VPS). With as few as three VR2Ws and a few synchronization tags, you can study movements of your tagged animals to within a few meters and over areas covering many kilometers!

For those who do not upgrade or convert their VR2 receivers, VEMCO will continue to sell our current tag types that are detectable by VR2s for at least the next two years. As more users move to using new tags, the pressure on the existing coding map will be eased and through re-use of IDs, we believe there will be sufficient tag IDs to support a smaller community of VR2 users beyond the two years.