Collaborative Research NeTS-NOSS: SEA-Swarm: A Rapidly Deployable Underwater Sensor Network

该项目旨在定义，优化和实现一种新型的水下传感器网络架构，称为SEA-Swarm（Sensor Equipped Aquatic Swarm），该架构由大量低成本的水下传感器组成，这些传感器作为一个群体（群）随着水流和分散而运行和移动。 拟议的SEA-Swarm架构将为水环境中的观测、监测和探索开创一个全新的时代。这一工具本质上将是多学科的，预计将促进网络和通信研究人员与环境科学、海洋生物学和沿海监测与安全等其他科学界之间的广泛合作。 本项目将沿着相关基础研究方面的一些技术挑战：基于OFDM设计新一代水声通信调制解调器，由于多普勒补偿和MIMO空时信号处理技术，实现前所未有的数据速率。协同通信协议，由信息理论的中继信道驱动，协同优化与新的能量有效的地理路由算法。 实质上，从源到目的地的虚拟管道中的所有节点合作以可靠地传递消息。为了实现可靠的数据传输，研究了用于擦除校正的网络编码和用于能量效率的分组组合。最后，有效的定位方案的基础上，水下GPS和节点专用的数据收集功能（数据骡子）的主张，以解决由于网络的群体性质的移动性和拓扑结构的随机性问题。 通过专用的仿真环境（Aqua-Sim）对涉及上述方面的跨层设计进行了验证。USC应开发具有成本效益的水上声学通信试验台，以提供基本网络算法的概念验证。最后，一个水下试验台的概念验证计划与其他现有的项目，如MyPond和MySound在康涅狄格州大学，并在加州大学洛杉矶分校滨海水上运动中心协同。 所有三个合作团队的理论和实验工作都将涉及研究生，并将本科生暴露于最先进的通信工程项目中，这些项目是在上述测试平台的框架内开发的。

This project aim at defining, optimizing and implementing a novel underwater sensor network architecture, called SEA-Swarm (Sensor Equipped Aquatic Swarm), that consists of a large number of low cost underwater sensors that operate and move as a group (swarm) with water current and dispersion. The proposed SEA-Swarm architecture will enable a whole new era of observations, monitoring and explorations in the aqueous environment. Such tool will be by its very essence multidisciplinary and is expected to foster a broad collaboration between researchers in networking and communications and other scientific communities, such as environmental sciences, marine biology and coastal surveillance and security. A number of technological challenges shall be addressed by this project, along with the related fundamental research aspects: a new generation of underwater acoustic communications modems is to be designed based on OFDM, achieving unprecedented data rates thanks to Doppler compensation and MIMO space-time signal processing techniques. Cooperative communication protocols, driven by the information theoretic relay channel, are synergistically optimized jointly with a new energy efficient geo-routing algorithm. In essence, all the nodes in a virtual pipe from source to destination cooperate to reliably deliver the message. For reliable data transport, network coding for erasure correction and packet combining for energy efficiency is investigated. Finally, efficient localization schemes based on underwater GPS and nodes with dedicated data-collection functions (data mules) are advocated in order to tackle the mobility and the topology randomness problems due to the swarm nature of the network. The cross-layer design involving the above aspects is validated through a dedicated simulation environment (Aqua-Sim). A cost-effective over-the-water acoustic communication testbed shall be developed by USC in order to provide proof of concept of the basic network algorithms. Finally, an underwater testbed proof of concept is planned in synergy with other existing projects such as MyPond and MySound at U-Conn, and at the UCLA Marina Aquatic Center. The theoretical and experimental work at all three collaborating teams shall involve graduate students and also expose undergraduate students to state-of-the art communication engineering projects, developed in the framework of the above mentioned testbeds.