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Underwater Backscatter: What is its Practical Communication Distance?

Published: 13 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Recent years have seen mounting interest in low-power, distributed subsea internet-of-things (IoT) networks because of their potential in environmental, industrial, and defense applications [1,2]. Energy-efficient ocean IoT networks can enable long-term sensing of ocean variables (temperature, pH, pressure, salinity, etc.) to create more accurate climate and weather prediction models and monitor the impact of climate change on the ocean [3]. Similarly, low-cost and efficient ocean IoT networks can help boost the growth of the world's blue economy by enabling active monitoring of marine infrastructures ranging from oil/gas pipelines to underwater tunnels [4]. Real-time distributed underwater sensor networks can help boost aquaculture (seafood farm) production by monitoring the farm vitals (water temperature, dissolved nutrients, pH, etc.) and detecting environmental hazards (such as harmful algae blooms) early [5].

References

[1]
DARPA. Ocean of Things Aims to Expand Maritime Awareness across Open wSeas. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2017--12-06.
[2]
Tidal X. Protecting the ocean with technology systems while feeding humanity sustainably. https://x.company/projects/tidal/
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Jeff Tollefson. 2018. Sensor array provides new look at global ocean current. Nature.
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Michael Ho et al. 2020. Inspection and monitoring systems subsea pipelines: A review paper. Structural Health Monitoring, 19(2):606--645.
[5]
Aquaculture Intelligence. https://www.innovasea. com/aquaculture-intelligence/, 2020. INNOVASEA.
[6]
Junsu Jang and Fadel Adib. 2019. Underwater backscatter networking. Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, 187--199.
[7]
Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, Sayed Afzal, Osvy Rodriguez, and Fadel Adib. 2020. Ultra-wideband underwater backscatter via piezoelectric metamaterials. Proceedings of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication.
[8]
Sayed Saad Afzal, Waleed Akbar, Osvy Rodriguez, Mario Doumet, Unsoo Ha, Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, and Fadel Adib. Sept. 2022. Battery-free wireless imaging of underwater environments. Nature Communications, 13(1):5546.
[9]
Sayed Saad Afzal, Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, Waleed Akbar, Osvy Rodriguez, and Fadel Adib. 2020. Enabling higher-order modulation for underwater backscatter communication. Global Oceans.
[10]
Pavel V. Nikitin, K.V.S. Rao, and Roberto D. Martinez. 2007. Differential rcs of rfid tag. Electronics letters, 43(8):1.
[11]
Waleed Akbar, Ahmed Allam, and Fadel Adib. 2023. The underwater backscatter channel: theory, link budget, and experimental validation. Proceedings of the 29th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking.
[12]
Milica Stojanovic. 2007. On the relationship between capacity and distance in an underwater acoustic communication channel. ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, 11(4):34--43.
[13]
R.J. Bobber. 1971. Underwater electroacoustic measurements. Technical Report AD0717318, Naval Research Laboratory.
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BII-7550 Series Split Beam Transducer. 2022. https://www.benthowave.com/products/Specs/ BII-7550Datasheet.pdf. Benthowave.
[15]
Ahmed Allam, Waleed Akbar, and Fadel Adib. 2023. Underwater backscatter link budget tool. Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2023 Conference. Tool is available online at https:// github.com/signalkinetics/linkbudget

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Published In

cover image GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications
GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications  Volume 28, Issue 1
March 2024
35 pages
EISSN:2375-0537
DOI:10.1145/3665112
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 13 May 2024
Published in SIGMOBILE-GETMOBILE Volume 28, Issue 1

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