Kraken Sonar Systems acquires all Intellectual Property (IP) rights to the AquaPix® Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) technology platform from Marport Deep Sea Technologies Inc.
The SAS technology assets consist of all hardware and software intellectual property targeted to military and commercial applications. The transaction had an effective closing date of December 31, 2012.
A number of different underwater activities rely on high quality seabed imaging. Offshore exploration, ocean science, seabed mapping and military missions are examples of applications with growing demands for improved seabed image resolution.
Until recently, sidescan sonars and multibeam echo-sounders have been the leading technology for detailed mapping and imaging of the seafloor. However, Synthetic Aperture Sonar provides ultra-high image resolution with superior area coverage rates.
SAS offer high resolution imagery at longer ranges than conventional side-scan sonars. This is done by replacing traditional sonar hardware with sophisticated signal processing software. The principle of SAS is that the receive transducer array is synthesized in software by the coherent recombination of many sonar pings overlapping an area of interest. This represents a major savings in sonar hardware and enables much higher resolution than is possible with conventional sonars.
Kraken was recently spun-out from Marport and is headquartered in St. Johns, Newfoundland.
"While Synthetic Aperture Sonar is an important marine technology with significant market potential we feel it requires dedicated management, engineering and financial resources to efficiently advance commercialization," said Cyril McKelvie, President and CEO of Marport. "Marport has incubated the development of the AquaPix® SAS platform for the past two years. We believe the transaction with Kraken provides the best opportunity for successful product commercialization while ensuring our shareholders have participation in upside success."