High-Resolution Seafloor Absolute Pressure Gauge Measurements Using a Better Counting Method

Abstract Vibrating quartz force transducers are the critical component of most deep-sea pressure and depth gauges in use in oceanography, producing a frequency output that varies with pressure. Accurate and low drift pressure measurements can be obtained by precisely measuring this frequency. In most implementations, the frequency is determined by counting the number of cycles of a high-frequency standard oscillator occurring during a large number of cycles of the lower-frequency quartz force oscillator. Resolution is limited by the sampling interval (length of counting) and the frequency of the frequency standard. Alternative counting methods can provide significant (20–40 dB) improvements in resolution at sampling rates above 1 Hz. Each counting method can be described as a different filter applied to the output of a counter of the frequency standard gated at each transition of the transducer quartz oscillator. Improvements in resolution can be understood as the result of minimizing the aliasing of higher-frequency counting noise into the spectrum below the Nyquist frequency. A simple multipole infinite impulse response (IIR) filter designed to limit spectral leakage of high-frequency noise minimizes the noise spectrum and thereby optimizes the resolution of the pressure output. The resultant noise spectrum rises as frequency squared above 1 Hz, independent of the sampling rate. At frequencies below 1 Hz, it is limited by noise in the electronics driving the force transducer quartz oscillator. Resolution increases with frequency of the frequency standard up to about 200 MHz, plateauing for higher frequencies due to other noise sources (likely electronic).