There is a major gap in the water technology industry today: the ability to continue collecting reliable data during winter conditions. In the Great Lakes, winter monitoring is traditionally limited as most sensing technologies and equipment cannot withstand the environment. This creates gaps in our data, leaving researchers and utilities with little to no information about what is happening beneath the surface for a portion of the year.

Environmental and Operational Risk

This lack of seasonal data presents a significant environmental risk. To better understand this issue, we spoke with Steven McMurray, Research Coordinator at Old Woman Creek (OWC) National Estuarine Research Reserve, which served as the host site for a recent tech deployment addressing this challenge.

"We have to pull our instruments whenever there’s a threat of ice," explains McMurray. "That really limits us to two-thirds or three-quarters of a year where we can actually collect data. We’re missing that winter piece... we really have no idea what’s going on over the winter months."

Monitoring under ice is essential for the early detection of oil spills or contaminants. Without it, a leak could go unnoticed for weeks, trapped beneath a frozen surface where it is hidden from view and nearly impossible to track.

Protecting Public Health and Water Quality

Beyond spill detection, year-round observation is vital for tracking changing winter conditions and overall ecosystem health. McMurray notes that in their long-term analysis of estuary data, OWC has seen rising temperatures and increased chlorophyll-a (a proxy for algal blooms). Because the biological activity that drives these trends continues even when the lake surface is frozen, maintaining consistent data streams is critical for public health.

Monitoring these variables during the colder months also allows utilities to track the presence of diatoms and the production of geosmin. These factors directly impact water treatment processes, often causing significant taste and odor issues for consumers. Without consistent data, treatment plants are forced to react to these changes after they reach the intake, rather than managing them proactively.

Advancing Solutions for Year-Round Monitoring 

To fill this critical gap, Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA) is working to advance technologies that enable consistent, year-round observation. As part of this effort, we trialed CSignum’s innovative technology in the real-world conditions of the Great Lakes region to monitor water conditions throughout the winter season.

CSignum’s Wireless Telemetry

In most winter environments, traditional sensing systems rely on a physical cable to connect a submerged sensor to a modem on the surface. These cables are the primary "failure point" in winter monitoring; as surface ice shifts and expands, it easily snaps or crimps these connections, leading to total data loss and equipment damage.

CSignum’s technology is specifically designed to eliminate this vulnerability. Their approach utilizes Electromagnetic Field Signaling (EMFS) to transmit data wirelessly through water, ice, rock, and even solid barriers like concrete.

Because EMFS creates a spherical signal field rather than a traditional line-of-sight radio wave, it can potentially transmit through dense materials where Wi-Fi or cellular signals often fail. In a winter monitoring context, this capability is essential for environmental safety because it provides a continuous data stream that can identify issues immediately. CSignum’s system enables the real-time detection of oil spills and contaminants beneath the ice. The technology can alert authorities to environmental threats as they occur, preventing hazardous conditions from developing or spreading undetected beneath the frozen surface.

This technology offers a variety of other potential use cases beyond winter lake monitoring, including signaling through concrete manholes, monitoring inside metal intake pipes, and maintaining data streams during flood events where surface-level electronics might be damaged.

Monitoring Under the Ice

CSignum’s technology is capable of operating in rugged conditions because the entire sensing unit remains completely submerged and out of the "crush zone" of the surface ice. By using a specialized anchoring system, the device stays securely on the bottom of the water body, while the data is sent wirelessly from the lakebed through the ice to a receiver stationed safely on the shore.

As Jeff Tingley, CSignum’s Head of Americas, explains:

"A lot of devices in the wintertime have to be taken out of the water because they don't want to lose them under the ice. The cables get crimped in the ice. If there is a buoy that's attached, it can get crushed by the ice... [Our tech] allows readings during time periods that most people don't have readings."

Technology Deployment at Old Woman Creek

Deployed from November 2025 through April 2026, the CSignum device was used at Old Woman Creek to monitor temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, pH, and turbidity. This field trial allowed the team at OWC to monitor winter water conditions while allowing CSignum to evaluate their technology in an extreme, real-world environment.

"Some really interesting things came out of the data," says McMurray. "First and foremost, you can see exactly when the ice starts forming and when it starts thawing. We were able to document a beach opening, where our natural sand barrier breached and allowed Old Woman Creek to flow into Lake Erie. We also documented a number of seiche events, where wind pushes water around the lake."

By maintaining a continuous data stream throughout the winter, OWC was able to capture these events that traditionally go unrecorded. This level of oversight allows researchers to better understand how the estuary behaves during the winter months and provides a complete picture of the ecosystem's year-round cycle.

Refining the Technology

Through real-world testing, innovators are able to identify and address challenges that only emerge in the field. Based on the insights gained from the deployment, CSignum is implementing several improvements and enhancements:

Software Updates:  To make the system more user-friendly, CSignum updated their software to simplify the process of selecting and managing specific sensor measurements.

More Robust Anchoring Methods: The team identified the need for enhanced anchoring methods to ensure the device remains stationary and secure in the water.

Battery Performance Management: The trial provided critical data on how batteries react to extended periods in freezing water, allowing the team to better manage power consumption for long-term winter deployments.

Advancing Innovation Through Real-World Collaboration

Cleveland Water Alliance helps innovators trial and advance their solutions in the environments where they are needed most. By connecting companies like CSignum with end users, they gain direct feedback and performance data based on their technology's performance in the field.

Through this deployment, CSignum was able to refine both their hardware and software and gained valuable insights on their technology through the testing process. Jeff Tingley from CSignum shared how the deployment with CWA provided the necessary conditions to prove their solution:

"Cleveland Water Alliance is a very highly regarded organization... and you know the Great Lakes are the largest freshwater bodies in the world. We really wanted to partner with them due to the quality of work done, the extent of knowledge that CWA has and its partnerships. You got the installer, you got the location, and then we've all worked very well together in order to make that happen with CWA right at the center of that... It was the right partners with the right application with the right team that got this done. So it was a great experience."

Filling Market Gaps

By expanding our testbed capabilities into the winter months, Cleveland Water Alliance is directly addressing the industry's critical need for year-round data. As Steven McMurray notes, "Innovative technology is transforming the way we’re able to collect data."

As we look to future deployments this season, we remain dedicated to offering trial opportunities for cutting-edge technology and making Ohio a premier landing pad for global water innovation.