About Us
Wavefront was founded in 2004 with a mission to develop imaging sonar systems for maritime security, defence and civilian markets. Wavefront was acquired by Sonardyne Group in 2008 and the company’s technology is embedded in Sonardyne products including intruder detection and navigation sonars, and the Solstice multi-aperture side scan sonar. The company continues to develop leading-edge new sonar products and offers contract design services to Group companies and external customers.
Insights
The risk of a collision or a grounding can be dramatically reduced with our Vigilant Forward Look Sonar – small and light, but with best in class performance. Mariners can benefit from early and automated hazard warnings of everything from uncharted reefs and sandbanks to submerged objects such as shipping containers. And unmanned vehicles can also use a comprehensive data interface to link into the vehicle’s autopilot.
Sonardyne and Bluefin Robotics, developers of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), have collaborated to integrate a Solstice side scan sonar with a Bluefin-12 AUV with results of recent payload testing producing higher quality imagery than is currently available from conventional sonar. A modular vehicle that allows for swappable payloads, Bluefin-12 is most commonly used for offshore survey, search and salvage, environmental monitoring and unexploded ordnance survey operations.
Our self-contained Sentry ‘B’ integrity monitoring sonar has achieved a technical first in a project which could help unlock Papua New Guinea’s first offshore hydrocarbon development.
Nearly 100 kilometres off the coast of Papua New Guinea, there’s a large crater in the seabed, 250 metres in diameter and 44 metres deep. It’s what was left behind when, in1983, an appraisal well on the Pasca Agas-condensate discovery blew out.
Offshore Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is widely regarded as a viable option to reduce the amount of waste carbon dioxide (CO2) from power stations and industry being released into the atmosphere. Once captured, CO2 is transported by tanker vessel or pipeline and injected into suitable geological formations offshore and stored indefinitely.
Containment failure at an offshore CO2 storage site – whilst viewed as highly unlikely – is of significant concern to regulatory bodies, operators and environmental groups. So in 2014, a three year funded research programme was kicked off with a consortium being appointed and challenged to develop the capability to reliably detect CO2 in the marine environment.
The Sentinel Intruder Detection Sonar detects, tracks, and classifies divers and autonomous underwater vehicles approaching a protected asset from any direction and alerts security personnel to the threat. Deployed from a boat, installed in a port or placed along a coastline, it can reliably identify underwater vehicles at ranges of up to 1,200 metres and divers at up to 900 metres. These performance levels have led it to be used for military, critical national infrastructure, vessel and VIP protection duties around the world.