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Marport Named to MTR 100

ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND – AUGUST 30, 2010 — Marport Deep Sea Technologies Inc., a leading underwater acoustics technology company, announced today that it has been named to the 2010 Marine Technology Reporter (MTR) Top 100 list. This is the third consecutive year that Marport has been named to the MTR 100.

Marine Technology Reporter is the world’s largest audited circulation magazine to cover the marine technology market. Each year the magazine evaluates and ranks marine technology companies worldwide to create the MTR 100 list. In the July/August 2010 Issue of MTR, Marport and the other MTR 100 companies are profiled as the leading companies serving the global marine technology industry.

Marport was selected based on the merit of its Software Defined Sonar® platform. Software Defined Sonar (SDS) is an advanced technology that’s revolutionizing the underwater acoustics industry by enabling significant increases in sonar flexibility, capability and price/performance value. As the name implies, SDS has the ability to instantly transform sonar functions through the use of software operating on reconfigurable embedded computing devices such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGA).

The frequency-agile transceiver decodes multiple underwater communications protocols from a wide variety of 3rd party manufacturers of sensors, net sounders, sonars and related acoustic hardware. One Broadband Acoustic Transceiver can replace multiple older bridge cabinets which can significantly reduce the need for expensive bridge equipment and associated maintenance costs.

To take full advantage of digital processing, SDS keeps the sonar signal in the digital domain for as much of the signal chain as possible, digitizing and reconstructing signals close to the underwater transducer. This allows digital techniques to perform functions traditionally done by analog components as well as other functions not possible with legacy sonar designs.

With SDS, sonar channel modulation waveforms are defined in software. Waveforms are generated as sampled digital signals and converted from digital to analog via a wideband Digital-to-Analog Convertor (DAC) for transmission. The sonar receiver, similarly, employs a wideband Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) that captures, extracts, and demodulates the acoustic channel waveform using software running on the FPGA.

Reconfigurable computing and FPGA technologies offer the promise of substantial performance gains over traditional architectures via customizing, even at runtime, the topology of the underlying architecture to match the specific needs of a given application.

Reconfigurable computing has become a major area of research in computing and electrical engineering as they have been identified as powerful alternatives for creating highly efficient computing and communication systems. Reconfigurable computing systems, such as Marport’s Software Defined Sonar, offer substantial performance improvements when compared against traditional hardware-centric architectures. Reconfiguration is characterized by the ability of the software-centric architecture to rapidly alter the sonar’s functionality during runtime by dynamic "loading" new software functions on the FPGA. By taking advantage of the FPGA’s digital signal processing capabilities, significant cost reductions can be introduced into complex sonar systems. This allows integrators, contractors and end-users to accomplish more with less.

"The Marport team continues to work hard to produce innovative and customer focused sonar technology such as our Software Defined Sonar platform,” said Karl Kenny, Marport’s President & CEO. “It’s a true honour to be recognized as a leader amongst some of the best known marine technology companies in the world. We extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to the editors and staff at Marine Technology Reporter for this recognition."

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