Seatronics Reaches Century of Sales with Gen 5 Multiplexer (MUX)

Seatronics, an Acteon company, has secured its sale of the 100th industry-leading Gen 5 MUX: a milestone it has reached in just two years.

“The Gen 5 MUX is the most versatile, high-specification fibre multiplexer solution currently available,” explains Adil Ali, international product sales manager, Seatronics. “Reaching this 100 unit sales milestone is of course significant in terms of commercial success, but also helps bring Seatronics and RTS closer to the client base with this superbly engineered piece of kit. In the short-to-medium term, we are offering the industry a best-in-class solution. Ultimately, we believe that this will be the industry-standard multiplexer that is specified in build programmes by offshore construction companies and remotely operated vehicle manufacturers.”

These systems, which are designed and manufactured by RTS and sold through Seatronics’ global network, are recognized as best-in-class by the ROV and subsea survey communities.

The immediate benefits in using the Gen 5 MUX lie in the time saved in mobilizing and interfacing various survey sensors. Additionally, the Gen 5 MUX eliminates much of the troubleshooting and trial-and-error testing that used to be required while setting up subsea communications, providing significant cost savings.

The Gen 5 MUX has standardised cabling and sensor compatibility that offers plug-and-play operation. It employs C-WDM techniques to offer the highest capacity system available on the market, and has 3000 m rated titanium housing. The system benefits from multiple power sources for a number of survey sensors including for up to four HDSDI video channels.

Several leading companies have used the system, which is generally selected for its reliability and ease of use. Mathias Sevestre, survey and positioning equipment engineer, Saipem, says, “Saipem has used the Gen 5 MUX on a variety of offshore construction projects. We chose this system after assessing its simplicity of use and ultimate reliability against other standard offerings. When testing, the Gen 5 did not drop any bytes of data, which is critically important for post-processing efficiency. We also made substantial time savings by avoiding the need to interface and cable-in each separate survey sensor directly to the remotely operated vehicle.”

It is available in a subsea housing or an OEM card package.