Building on the success of its Dolphin acoustic transceiver system, Yotta Navigation Corporation will design and build an ultrasonic acoustic modem capable of sending information through ocean acoustic channels at extremely high bit rates of 500 kbps to 1 Mbps over ranges from 10 to 100 meters. The device will be compact, reliable, and maximize use of proven COTS components. Historically, there have been significant obstacles to achieving this objective, particularly at a reasonable cost and size needed to fit within a AUV/UUV form factor. However, in preparing this Phase I proposal, Yotta Navigation has shown both through simulation and through modifications to an existing Dolphin system that this should be achievable, increasing our confidence in the proposed approach. We have identified and evaluated an initial set of updated hardware components including converters, signal processors and transducers for use. We will create an initial prototype available for demonstration at the end of the Phase I effort.
Benefit: In addition to military uses, other commercial applications include acoustic networks, ROVs, and UUVs used by the oil/gas/seismic testing industries, maritime construction and salvage, infrastructure inspection, fishing/aquaculture, marine science, and other markets that want high-data rate undersea communications for navigation, sensing, imagery, etc. and are currently limited by existing low-bandwidth acoustic modems and for whom optical modems have proven impractical.
Keywords: Modem, Modem, UUV, underwater networks, Acoustic Communication, DSP, ultrasonic
