NeTS: Small: Long-range Ocean Communication Links Powered by Energy Harvesting

海上通讯的发展严重落后于陆上通讯。现有的海洋通信技术通常能力非常有限，而且操作起来极其昂贵。需要新的解决方案来满足对宽带海上移动的无线接入的迫切需求。 该项目的目的是通过开发远程自供电海洋无线通信链路来填补海洋宽带无线通信的空白。 海洋无线链路由小型、免维护和低成本的浮动无线基站（BS）组成，这些基站可以简单地投入水中。一旦进入水中，BS就开始从海浪中获取能量，并相互建立通信联系。这样，用户的宽带流量就可以通过这些链路传送到互联网上。该项目将给海上通信带来革命性的变化。这种技术可以实现过去不可行但非常理想的新的海事联网应用和操作场景。 它可以对海洋相关产业的各个方面产生重大影响，如渔业，休闲划船，海洋运输，石油和天然气工业，海洋科学研究以及国家安全和国防。该项目将集中在两个重点领域：Thrust 1是关于海浪能量收集。 为了使BS向其用户和其它BS提供大覆盖范围和高容量链路，BS必须消耗大量能量。 现有的技术尺寸太大，因此价格昂贵，难以在波涛汹涌的海洋状态下稳定，并且需要频繁维护。该项目通过构建一种新型的海浪能量采集器来解决这一关键挑战，该采集器可以在典型的海洋状态下有效地采集数十瓦的功率，直径小于1米的浮动浮标。第二个目标是建立高容量的海上通信链路。不断移动的海浪会影响BS之间回程链路的容量、稳定性和范围。 在本计画中，我们将研究如何分析和建立信道模型，并设计天线和无线电硬件来处理海洋通信链路的复杂信道。研究人员还将研究海洋通信链路的独特功能及其对网络通信的潜在有益和/或有害影响。

Advancements in maritime communications are severely lagging behind its land counterpart. Existing marine communication technologies usually have very limited capacity and are extremely expensive to operate. Novel solutions are demanded to meet the imminent requirements for broadband marine mobile wireless access. The purpose of this project is to fill the void of marine broadband wireless communications by developing long-range self-powered ocean wireless communication links. The ocean wireless link is composed of compact, maintenance-free and low cost floating wireless base stations (BS) that can be simply dropped into the water. Once in the water, the BSs start to harvest energy from ocean waves and establish communication links with each other. Users' broadband traffic, then, can be delivered to the Internet through these links. This project will bring revolutionary change to the maritime communications. New maritime networked applications and operation scenarios that are infeasible but highly desirable in the past can be enabled by this technology. It can have significant impact on all aspect of ocean related industry, such as fishing, recreational boating, marine transportation, oil and gas industry, ocean scientific study, and national security and defense.The project will focus on two thrust areas: Thrust 1 is about ocean wave energy harvesting. For a BS to provide large coverage range and high capacity links to its users and other BSs, the BS must consume a large amount of energy. Existing technologies are too large in size and hence are expensive and hard to be stabilized in rough ocean states and require frequent maintenance. This project solves this critical challenge by building a novel ocean wave energy harvester that can effectively harvest tens of watts of power on typical ocean states with a floating buoy of less than 1 meter diameter. Thrust 2 is about building the high capacity marine communication links. The constantly moving ocean waves can affect the capacity, stability and range of the backhaul links among BSs. In this project, we will study how to analyze and model the channel and design antenna and radio hardwares to handle the complex channel of ocean communication links. The researchers will also study the unique features of ocean communication links and their potential beneficial and/or harmful impact on network communications.