Underwater acoustic modem with streaming video capabilities

Abstract

Oceans have shown tremendous importance and impact on our lives. Thus the need for monitoring and protecting the oceans has grown exponentially in recent years. On the other hand, oceans have economical and industrial potential in areas such as pharmaceutical, oil, minerals and biodiversity. This demand is increasing and the need for high data rate and nearreal-time communications between submerged agents became of paramount importance. Among the needs for underwater communications, streaming video (e.g. for inspecting risers or hydrothermal vents) can be seen as the top challenge, which when solved will make all the other applications possible. Presently, the only reliable approach for underwater video streaming relies on wired connections or tethers (e.g. from ROVs to the surface) which presents severe operational constraints that makes acoustic links together with AUVs and sensor networks strongly appealing. Using new polymer-based acoustic transducers, which in very recent works have shown to have bandwidth and power efficiency much higher than the usual ceramics, this article proposes the development of a reprogrammable acoustic modem for operating in underwater communications with video streaming capabilities. The results have shown a maximum data-rate of 1Mbps with a simple modulation scheme such as OOK, at a distance of 20 m.

Wideband and Wide Beam Polyvinylidene Difluoride (PVDF) Acoustic Transducer for Broadband Underwater Communications

“…In this sense, and in order to fill this technological gap, the present work describes the development and implementation of a wideband wide beam PVDF acoustic transducer to operate as emitter for frequencies up to 1 MHz. So, this transducer will be a key element in a high data rate wireless communications system for short distances (up to 15 m) [11].…”

Design and Implementation of a Multi-Function Hydrophone for Underwater Acoustic Application

“…For example, in [8], low-power and low bit error rate (BER) amplitude shift keying (ASK), acoustic MODEMs were designed by using STM32F103 (STMicroelectronics, Paris, France), the BER was about 10 −3 at the distance of 100 m, while when the distance was about 500 m, the BER was approximately 10 −1 . A hydrophone was used to design on-off keying (OOK) acoustic MODEMs for video-capable with a high data rate in excess of 1 Mbps over 100 m in shallow water [9,10]. In one paper [11], an underwater acoustic orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) MODEM was designed, the maximum data rate could reach 5200 bps at a distance of 1000 m. Moreover, the number of null sub-carriers, pilot subcarriers, and receivers in the MODEM in [11] were all configurable.…”

A No-Reference Video Quality Assessment Model for Underwater Networks

“…However, performance has been evaluated using the peak signal-to-noise-ratio, which is an image metric that does not reflect the human perception of quality. The acoustic modem design in [5] features video transmission capabilities, but only over a short communication range (under 20 m). A subjective quality assessment study [6] showed how video generated with the heavy constraints imposed by current acoustic equipment can reach a relatively high-perceptual quality, thereby becoming useful as considered by a group of experienced ocean scientists.…”