SWE bridge: software interface for plug & work instrument integration into marine observation platforms

The integration of sensor systems into marine observation platforms
such as gliders, cabled observatories and smart buoys requires a great deal of effort
due to the diversity of architectures present in the marine acquisition systems.
In the past years important steps have been taken in order to improve both standardization
and interoperability, i.e. the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Sensor Web
Enablement. This set of standards and protocols provide a well-defined framework
to achieve standardized data chains. However a significant gap is still present in the
lower-end of the data chain, between the sensor systems and the acquisition platforms.
In this work a standards-based architecture to bridge this gap is proposed in
order to achieve plug & work, standardized and interoperable acquisition systems.