Driven by the huge demand to explore oceans, underwater wireless communications have been rapidly developed in the past few decades. Due to the complex physical characteristics of water, acoustic wave is the only media available for underwater wireless communication at any distance. As a result, underwater acoustic communication (UAC) is the major research field in underwater wireless communication. In this paper, characteristics of underwater acoustic channels are first introduced and compared with terrestrial communication to demonstrate the difficulties in UAC research. To give a general impression of the UAC, current important research areas are mentioned. Furthermore, different principal modulation-based schemes for short- and medium-range communications with high data rates are investigated and summarized. To evaluate the performance of UAC systems in general, three criteria are presented based on the research publications and our years of experience in high-rate short- to medium-range communications. These three criteria provide useful tools to generally guide the design and evaluate the performance of underwater acoustic communication systems.

With the goal of achieving high stability and reliability to support underwater point-to-point communications and code division multiple access (CDMA) based underwater networks, a direct sequence spread spectrum based underwater acoustic communication system using dual spread spectrum code is proposed. To solve the contradictions between the information data rate and the accuracy of Doppler estimation, channel estimation, and frame synchronization, a data frame structure based on dual spread spectrum code is designed. A long spread spectrum code is used as the training sequence, which can be used for data frame detection and synchronization, Doppler estimation, and channel estimation. A short spread spectrum code is used to modulate the effective information data. A delay cross-correlation algorithm is used for Doppler estimation, and a correlation algorithm is used for channel estimation. For underwater networking, each user is assigned a different pair of spread spectrum codes. Simulation results show that the system has a good anti-multipath, anti-interference, and anti-Doppler performance, the bit error rate can be smaller than 10⁻⁶ when the signal-to-noise ratio is larger than −10 dB, the data rate can be as high as 355 bits/s, and the system can be used in the downlink of CDMA based networks.

Underwater hostile channel conditions challenge video transmission designs. The current designs often treat video coding and transmission schemes as individual modules. In this study, we develop an adaptive transceiver with channel state information (CSI) by taking into account the importance of video components and channel conditions. The design is more effective than the traditional ones. However, in practical systems, perfect CSI may not be available. Therefore, we compare the imperfect CSI case with existing schemes, and validate the effectiveness of our design through simulations and measured channels in terms of a better peak signal-to-noise ratio and a higher video structural similarity index.

Underwater mobile sensor networks (UMSNs) with free-floating sensors are more suitable for understanding the immense underwater environment. Target tracking, whose performance depends on sensor localization accuracy, is one of the broad applications of UMSNs. However, in UMSNs, sensors move with environmental forces, so their positions change continuously, which poses a challenge on the accuracy of sensor localization and target tracking. We propose a high-accuracy localization with mobility prediction (HLMP) algorithm to acquire relatively accurate sensor location estimates. The HLMP algorithm exploits sensor mobility characteristics and the multistep Levinson-Durbin algorithm to predict future positions. Furthermore, we present a simultaneous localization and target tracking (SLAT) algorithm to update sensor locations based on measurements during the process of target tracking. Simulation results demonstrate that the HLMP algorithm can improve localization accuracy significantly with low energy consumption and that the SLAT algorithm can further decrease the sensor localization error. In addition, results prove that a better localization accuracy will synchronously improve the target tracking performance.

Micro-sized autonomous underwater vehicles (μAUVs) are well suited to various applications in confined underwater spaces. Acoustic communication is required for many application scenarios of μAUVs to enable data transmission without surfacing. This paper presents the integration of a compact acoustic communication device with a μAUV prototype. Packet reception rate (PRR) and bit error rate (BER) of the acoustic communication link are evaluated in a confined pool environment through experiments while the μAUV is either stationary or moving. We pinpoint several major factors that impact the communication performance. Experimental results show that the multi-path effect significantly affects the synchronization signals of the communication device. The relative motion between the vehicle and the base station also degrades the communication performance. These results suggest future methods towards improvements.

Underwater docking greatly facilitates and extends operation of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) without the support of a surface vessel. Robust and accurate control is critically important for docking an AUV into a small underwater funneltype dock station. In this paper, a docking system with an under-actuated AUV is presented, with special attention paid to control algorithm design and implementation. For an under-actuated AUV, the cross-track error can be controlled only via vehicle heading modulation, so both the cross-track error and heading error have to be constrained to achieve successful docking operations, while the control problem can be even more complicated in practical scenarios with the presence of unknown ocean currents. To cope with the above issues, a control scheme of a three-hierarchy structure of control loops is developed, which has been embedded with online current estimator/compensator and effective control parameter tuning. The current estimator can evaluate both horizontal and vertical current velocity components, based only on the measurement of AUV’s velocity relative to the ground; in contrast, most existing methods use the measurements of both AUV’s velocities respectively relative to the ground and the water column. In addition to numerical simulation, the proposed docking scheme is fully implemented in a prototype AUV using MOOS-IvP architecture. Simulation results show that the current estimator/compensator works well even in the presence of lateral current disturbance. Finally, a series of sea trials are conducted to validate the current estimator/compensator and the whole docking system. The sea trial results show that our control methods can drive the AUV into the dock station effectively and robustly.

Underwater imaging is being used increasingly by marine biologists as a means to assess the abundance of marine resources and their biodiversity. Previously, we developed the first automatic approach for estimating the abundance of Norway lobsters and counting their burrows in video sequences captured using a monochrome camera mounted on trawling gear. In this paper, an alternative framework is proposed and tested using deep-water video sequences acquired via a remotely operated vehicle. The proposed framework consists of four modules: (1) preprocessing, (2) object detection and classification, (3) object-tracking, and (4) quantification. Encouraging results were obtained from available test videos for the automatic video-based abundance estimation in comparison with manual counts by human experts (ground truth). For the available test set, the proposed system achieved 100% precision and recall for lobster counting, and around 83% precision and recall for burrow detection.

We evidence and study the differences in turbulence statistics in ocean dynamics carried by wind forcing at the air-sea interface. Surface currents at the air-sea interaction are of crucial importance because they transport heat from low to high latitudes. At first order, oceanic currents are generated by the balance of the Coriolis and pressure gradient forces (geostrophic current) and the balance of the Coriolis and the frictional forces dominated by wind stress (Ekman current) in the surface ocean layers. The study was conducted by computing statistical moments on the shapes of spectra computed within the framework of microcanonical multi-fractal formalism. Remotely sensed daily datasets derived from one year of altimetry and wind data were used in this study, allowing for the computation of two kinds of vector fields: geostrophy with and geostrophy without wind stress forcing. We explore the statistical properties of singularity spectra computed from velocity norms and vorticity data, notably in relation with kurtosis information to underline the differences in the turbulent regimes associated with both kinds of velocity fields.