S.M. Jesus
Comments:>(pdf, 83 MB)
Ref.:> oral presentation only
Abstract
This is a review presentation that addresses recent developments in underwater acoustic telemetry as a tool
for ocean observation, monitoring and protection. Distributed sensing is a paradigm with important reflections
in oceanic technology where bottom installed structures can not always be connected to a central hub through
cabled networks. Moreover, recent developments in ocean robotics lead to the off-the-shelf availability of
autonomous underwater vehicles that rely on wireless communications for sending information and receiving
commands. Unlike its aerial counterpart wireless underwater communications, are strongly affected and limited
by the propagation media: the low speed of propagation, highly limited bandwidth, spatial and time variability
of environmental properties and randomness, all together contribute to the slow adoption of standardized and
reliable underwater communications networks. This paper addresses the main issues regarding and characterizing
the underwater acoustic communication channel as well as the proposed techniques to overcome those issues for,
in a first stage, point-to-point (P2P) communications and then for the set up of full underwater networks
comprising both fixed and mobile nodes. The presentation is illustrated by real data based examples drawn from
experiments carried out at sea by the Signal Processing Laboratory, University of Algarve, Portugal (SiPLAB,
www.siplab.fct.ualg.pt) in numerous national and European research projects in the last 15 years.
Acknowledgement:
Work supported by FCT (Portugal), ONR (USA), European Commission (EU), CMRE (former NURC, NATO) and numerous
other agencies and institutions that will be properly acknowledged and cited in the presentation.