SBIR Phase II: Developing a Real-time High-data-rate Multicarrier Underwater Acoustic Modem

该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目旨在开发一种用于水上应用的实时高数据速率多载波水声调制解调器。即将开发的调制解调器将实现比所有竞争对手在具有挑战性的浅水环境中的商业产品高出一个数量级以上的数据速率。在存在类似脉冲的噪声和不期望的干扰时，它将具有稳健的差错性能。此外，调制解调器将具有高能效，以维持较长的运行时间，具有用户友好的界面，并维护易于扩展的体系结构，以促进高级网络功能。该项目将先进的多载波技术引入水下调制解调器市场，解决了该领域长期存在的一个问题，即在水下信道中实现多载波调制(以前的尝试都只取得了有限的成功)。随着数据速率提高一个数量级，该项目将显著推进水下遥测的最先进水平。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是，高数据速率多载波水声调制解调器将显著改善广泛的水生应用的运行，例如用于科学勘探、商业开发的水下环境观测，以及军事或反恐中的海岸线保护/目标探测。它还将直接促进新兴和快速发展的水下无线传感器网络和自主水下机器人网络的发展。显著增强的水环境监测能力将有助于我们更好地了解和开发地球，为我们的子孙后代保护和保护地球。由于预计85%以上的水下应用将在浅海进行，该项目将在环境、能源、渔业、旅游和国防等多个市场领域产生巨大的商业影响。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to develop a real-time high-data-rate multicarrier underwater acoustic modem for aquatic applications. The modem to be developed will achieve a data rate that is more than one order of magnitude higher than all competing commercial products in challenging shallow water environments. It will have robust error performance in the presence of impulse-like noise and undesired disruptions. In addition, the modem will be power efficient to sustain long operation time, have a user-friendly interface, and maintain an easily-extendable architecture to facilitate advanced networking functionalities. Bringing the advanced multicarrier technology into the underwater modem market, this project solves one long-standing problem in the field, i.e., making multicarrier modulation work in underwater channels (earlier attempts all had only limited success). With one order of magnitude data rate increase, this project will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in underwater telemetry. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is that the high-data-rate multicarrier underwater acoustic modem will significantly improve the operation of a wide range of aquatic applications, such as underwater environmental observation for scientific exploration, commercial exploitation, and coastline-protection/target-detection in military or anti-terrorism. It will also directly facilitate the development of emerging and fast-developing underwater wireless sensor networks and autonomous underwater vehicle networks. The significantly enhanced monitoring capability of aquatic environments will help us better understand and exploit the earth, preserve and protect it for our future generations. As more than 85% of underwater applications are envisioned to be in shallow water, this project will have enormous commercial impact in multiple market sectors including environment, energy, fishing, tourism, and national defense, etc.