¹Falmouth Technology Park
121 Bernard E. Saint Jean Drive
East Falmouth, MA USA
02536

²Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
MS #11
Woods Hole, MA USA
02543

Real-time knowledge of the directional spectra and other statistical properties of the wave environment in coastal waters and harbors is critically important information for those involved in marine
operations. Historical and real-time measurements are also important for coastal engineering applications and for investigations into coastal processes. The spectral and statistical properties of the
wave field can be calculated from accurate time-series of "triplet" measurements, either the three horizontal and vertical components of the velocity or the pressure and the two horizontal components of the velocity. MAVS-3, the Modular Acoustic Velocity Sensor, can make the necessary measurements in either form and can telemeter data to shore in real-time or store measurements internally for later processing.

Accurately and reliably calculating the spectral and statistical properties of a complex stochastic process with many degrees of freedom is, however, inherently a non-trivial task. This paper describes MWAVES, a software package that performs these calculations and presents the results to the operator in easily interpreted graphical and numeric forms. The kernal of routines that perform the calculation is fast and the graphical user interface through which the operator controls processing is full-featured and easy to use. A time history of the evolving statistical properties of the wave environment can be logged and plotted and all graphs can be stored in standard formats for later recall. MWAVES was developed for use with MAVS-3 data, but it has been successfully used with MAVS-2 measurements and can be applied to the triplet data of other instruments.

Submitted on January 22, 2003