EAGER: Developing Multi-Hop Sensorbots for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

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This EAGER proposal seeks funding to extend the Sensorbot network design, range and coverage by incorporating multi-hop functionality. Sensorbot developed by the PIs with internal ASU funding is a miniaturized, low-cost, underwater, autonomous sensor platform. A single Sensorbot constitutes a network node, capable of measuring and reporting the properties of the fluid in which it is located. With EAGER funding, short-range communicating Sensorbots will be intelligently link together to extend their coverage over long distances in a multi-hop networking approach, thus overcoming the range limitation of standard underwater optical communication. If successful, once deployed, the network of Sensorbots is expected to not only achieve continuous, autonomous, long term monitoring campaigns but to sustain two-way communication within the network. The goal of this project is to significantly extend the spatial range and coverage of a network of optically-communicating, deep ocean sensors.Broader Impacts:The Sensorbots were created to measure a wide range of low-temperature hydrothermal fluid properties. Sensors for pH, dissolved oxygen, trace metals, and temperature are now in operation, and several others are in the early stages of development. Currently under development are fluorescent polymers that respond to methane, sulfate, CO2, and other critical analytes in areas of diffuse flow in hydrothermal regions of the deep ocean. With improved communications, optical multi-hop networked Sensorbots will have broad and immediate application to a diverse array of ocean sensing fields. This potentially transformative proposal is expected to yield solutions to previously intractable questions about the extent of biogeochemical flux on the ocean floor. This project will include one post doc and two undergraduate students.