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Underwater networks of wireless sensors deployed along the coast or in the deep water are the most promising solution for the development of underwater monitoring, exploration and surveillance applications. A key feature of underwater networks that can significantly enhance current monitoring applications is the ability to accommodate real-time video information on an underwater communication link. In fact, while today monitoring relies on the exchange of simple discrete information, e.g., water temperature, and particle concentration, among others, by introducing real-time streaming capability of non-static images between wireless underwater nodes one can completely revolutionize the whole underwater monitoring scenario. To achieve this goal, underwater links are required to support a sufficiently high data rate, compatible with the streaming rates of the transmitted video sequence. Unfortunately, the intrinsic characteristic of the underwater propagation medium has made this objective extremely challenging. In this paper, we present the first physical layer transmission scheme for short-range and high-data rate ultrasonic underwater communications. The proposed solution, which we will refer to as Underwater UltraSonar (U2S), is based on the idea of transmitting short information-bearing carrierless ultrasonic signals, e.g., pulses, following a pseudo-random adaptive time-hopping pattern with a superimposed rate-adaptive Reed-Solomon forward error correction (FEC) channel coding. We also present the design of the first prototype of a software-defined underwater ultrasonic transceiver that implements U2S PHY transmission scheme through which we evaluate the U2S performance in real-scenario underwater experiments at the PHY layer, i.e., Bit Error Rate (BER) extensively, and at the application layer, i.e., structural similarity (SSIM) index. Results show that U2S links can support point-to-point data rate up to 1.38 Mbps and that by leveraging the flexibility of the adaptive time-hopping and adaptive channel coding techniques, one can trade between link throughput and energy consumption, still satisfying application layer requirements.
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Collaborative Hybrid ARQ for CDMA-based Reliable Underwater Acoustic Communications
Achieving high throughput and reliability in underwater acoustic networks is a challenging task due to the bandwidth-limited and unpredictable nature of the channel. In a multi-node structure, such as in the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT), the efficiency of links varies dynamically because of the channel variations. When the channel is not in good condition, e.g., when in deep fade, channel-coding techniques fail to deliver the required information even with multiple rounds of retransmissions. An efficient and agile collaborative strategy among the nodes is required to assign appropriate resources to each link based on their status and capability. Hence, a cross-layer collaborative strategy is introduced to increase the throughput of the network by allocating unequal share of system resources to different nodes/links. The proposed solution adjusts the physical- and link-layer parameters in a collaborative manner for a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)-based underwater network. An adaptive Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) solution is employed to guarantee reliable communications against errors in poor communication links. Results are being validated using data collected from the LOON underwater testbed, which is hosted by the NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) in La Spezia, Italy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1763709
- PAR ID:
- 10112863
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2018 Fourth Underwater Communications and Networking Conference (UComms)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 5
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/UComms.2018.8493231
