Deniz Unal’s PhD Proposal Review

Title:
Software-Defined Underwater Acoustic Networks

Committee Members:
Prof. Tommaso Melodia (Advisor)
Prof. Stefano Basagni
Prof. Kaushik Chowdhury
Dr. Emrecan Demirors

Abstract:
The exploration, monitoring, and understanding of oceans play a crucial role in addressing climate change, overseeing underwater pipelines, and preventing maritime warfare attacks. To achieve these significant objectives, it is vital to utilize networks of cost-effective and flexible underwater devices capable of efficiently collecting and transmitting information to the shore. However, the progress of underwater networks heavily relies on underwater acoustic modems, which currently face limitations such as low data rates and inflexible hardware designs, limiting their usability to specific scenarios. To overcome these limitations, we propose a modular software-defined acoustic networking platform built on the Zynq system-on-chip architecture that can be easily deployed in a compact form factor. Our platform distinguishes itself from existing solutions in several ways. Firstly, it possesses the capability to adapt to varying conditions by adjusting protocol parameters at all layers of the networking stack. Secondly, it achieves high data rate connections, particularly over short distances. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates with other sub-sea platforms, including underwater drones. We demonstrate the capabilities and the performance of our platform with tasks, such as channel estimation and characterization, establishing high data rate Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) links, and running third-party software to implement JANUS standard. In addition, we introduce the enabling technologies for the development and implementation of underwater networks. These technologies facilitate the establishment of connectivity between underwater networks and the shore, as well as the integration of modems with underwater vehicles. Lastly, we provide a demonstration of the algorithmic development conducted on our platform. We mainly consider high-rate, wideband, adaptive links and perform experimental evaluations at sea. In particular, we demonstrate multicarrier communications with mobile platforms with the presence of Doppler and compare the performance of forward error correction methods, and demonstrate dataset recording for artificial intelligence research.