CAREER: Embedded DSP with Underwater Renewable Energy: Towards Sustainability for Cyber-Aquatic Systems

专用数字信号处理（DSP）是各种嵌入式应用的关键技术。近年来，水下自治分布式系统在水生生物观测和探索中受到越来越多的关注。由于通信成本高和恶劣水下环境中能源供应的新限制，这些系统对可持续的信号处理提出了重大挑战。相对成熟和可预测的能量收集技术要么不适用于水下环境，要么不提供足够的能力。这就给网络水生系统的专用DSP设计带来了双重挑战，即有哪些替代能源可用以及如何有效可靠地利用可再生能源。这个CAREER项目旨在克服网络水生界面上出现的这些挑战。我们的目标是开发一个新的DSP设计框架，允许动态调整系统的复杂性/性能和能源效率水平，以适应可再生的水下能源。这项研究的结果将使可持续的网络水生系统具有巨大的创新潜力，但迄今为止在很大程度上尚未开发。该项目开发的设计工具和优化方法可应用于各种能源驱动的广泛嵌入式应用。该项目的教育部分旨在通过建立在该研究项目基础上的动态课程来加强跨学科教育。 通过康州大学的行业合作和推广计划，该项目将为学生，特别是女性和代表性不足的少数民族学生提供研究机会，并提高高中生的工程意识和兴趣。

Dedicated digital signal processing (DSP) is a key technology for a diversity of embedded applications. Recently, underwater autonomous distributed systems have received growing interest in aquatic observation and exploration. These systems pose significant challenges for sustainable signal processing due to the high communication cost and new constraints on energy supply in the harsh underwater environment. The relatively mature and predictable energy harvesting techniques are either not applicable in the underwater environment or do not offer sufficient capabilities. This raises dual challenges to the design of dedicated DSP for cyber-aquatic systems with respect to what alternative energy sources are available and how to effectively and reliably utilize renewable energy.This CAREER project seeks to overcome these challenges arising at the cyber-aquatic interface. The goal is to develop a new DSP design framework that allows dynamic tuning of system complexity/performance and energy-efficiency levels in adaptation with renewable underwater energy sources. The results from this research will enable sustainable cyber-aquatic systems that have great potential for innovations but have remained largely unexplored so far. Design tools and optimization methods developed from this project can be applied to a wide range of embedded applications powered by various energy sources.The education component of this project seeks to strengthen interdisciplinary education through a dynamic curriculum that builds on this research project. Through industry collaboration and outreach programs at UConn, this project will offer research opportunities to students especially women and underrepresented minority students, and enhance engineering awareness and interests among high-school students.