  The sustained and cost-effective monitoring of the water quality within
European coastal areas is of growing importance in view of the upcoming
European marine and maritime directives, i.e. the increased industrial use of
the marine environment. Such monitoring needs mechanisms/systems to detect the
water quality in a large sea area at different depths in real time. This paper
presents a system for the automated detection and analysis of water quality
parameters using an autonomous underwater vehicle. The analysis of discharge of
nitrate into Norwegian fjords near aqua farms is one of the main application
fields of this AUV system. As carrier platform the AUV "CWolf" from the
Fraunhofer IOSB-AST will be used, which is perfectly suited through its modular
payload concept. The mission Task and the integration of the payload unit which
includes the sensor module, the scientific and measurement computer in the AUV
carrier platform will be described. Few practice oriented information about the
software and interface concept, the function of the several software modules
and the test platform with the several test levels to test every module will be
discussed.
