You are hereProjects/ 4-channel UDDAS/ How to record - part 2

Projects/ 4-channel UDDAS/ How to record - part 2


PREVIOUS: Challenges to recording dolphin sounds




How the 4-channel UDDAS addresses these challenges

The 4-channel Underwater Dolphin Data Aquisition System, or 4-channel UDDAS, was designed by Michiel Schotten as a tool to deal with each of the recording challenges mentioned in the previous section.  It was modeled after an earlier version, called the single-channel UDDAS developed by Dr. Marc Lammers (for further details of the singe-channel UDDAS, click here).  The main asset of both these systems is that they are self-contained recording units which can be taken underwater by a diver.  With simultaneous video, behaviors of the sound producing dolphins and their head orientations can be recorded as well.

Recording young spotted dolphinThe extra advantage that the 4-channel UDDAS brings is that the entire frequency bandwidth of dolphin signals can be recorded up to 240 kHz.  Furthermore, with the 4-channel UDDAS one can also localize the recorded sounds, by using the arrival time differences of the sound at each of the 4 hydrophones (i.e., underwater microphones) to calculate the exact 3-D position of the sound source.  This enables one to determine the amplitude of the sounds at the source, and to attribute them to individual dolphins on the simultaneous video recordings.  That way, the recorded sounds can be associated with specific behaviors of the individual dolphins that produced them.




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