CIF: Small: Multiscale Methods for Mobile Underwater Networks

海洋覆盖了地球表面的71%，是人类探索最少的领域之一，但海洋对气候调节、营养物生产、石油回收和运输都是不可或缺的。为了更好地了解海洋和与水相关的应用，未来的科技努力将在很大程度上依赖于我们在仪器、车辆（有人驾驶和无人驾驶）、人类操作员、平台和所有类型的传感器之间进行可靠通信的能力。这种水下网络的粘合剂将是水声通信链路。尽管最近有声学物理层单链路的活动，但与基于无线电的地面无线通信相比，数字声学通信仍处于起步阶段。本项目利用水声信道的独特特性，显著提高水下网络的性能。研究的重点是在这种宽带环境下设计固有的多尺度、多径信道。令人惊讶的是，用于实际水下通信系统的宽带信道和不同多普勒尺度的耦合努力的收发器设计似乎尚未得到彻底的研究。该网络从单个链路到多个节点的整个网络的角度进行了检查，包括新颖的多尺度，多滞后信道建模，波形设计，均衡器设计，信道估计，单链路和网络容量评估，实现容量的新颖编码，以及大规模网络上的信令和路由。为了设计和分析高性能水声网络，本文以原则性的方式探讨了多尺度、多径信道的基本特性。设计了可实现的算法，努力达到基本限制。研究成果还将影响超声波、超宽带、宽带雷达、声纳、声信号处理、中高速车对车（V2V）通信以及可能对生物声纳的理解。

The oceans cover 71% of the earth's surface and represent one of the least explored frontiers, yet the oceans are integral to climate regulation, nutrient production, oil retrieval, and transportation. Future scientific and technological efforts to achieve better understanding of oceans and water-related applications will rely heavily on our ability to communicate reliably between instruments, vehicles (manned and unmanned), human operators, platforms, and sensors of all types. The glue of such underwater networks will be the underwater acoustic communication link. Despite recent activity on acoustic physical layer single-links, digital acoustic communication is in its infancy in comparison to comparable efforts for radio-based terrestrial wireless communication. This project exploits the unique features of the underwater acoustic channel to significantly improve performance of underwater networks. The research focus is on design for the inherently multi-scale, multipath channels in this wideband environment. Surprisingly, transceiver design for the coupled efforts of wideband channels and distinct Doppler scales for practical underwater communication systems does not appear to have been thoroughly investigated. The network is examined from the perspective of individual links up to entire networks of multiple nodes, encompassing novel multi-scale, multi-lag channel modeling, waveform design, equalizer designs, channel estimation, single-link and network capacity evaluation, novel coding to achieve capacity, as well as signaling and routing over large-scale networks. In a principled manner, the fundamental properties of multi-scale, multipath channels are explored in order to design and analyze high performance underwater acoustic networks. Implementable algorithms are designed which endeavor to achieve the fundamental limits. The research outcomes will also impact ultrasound, ultrawideband, wideband radar, sonar, acoustic signal processing, and moderate to high speed vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication and possibly understanding of biosonar.