Background
Associate Professor Iftekhar Ahmad and Edith Cowan University are leading a team-up with Curtin University, Swinburne University of Technology, and a WA industry partner to enhance wireless underwater acoustic technologies.
Australia is surrounded by a vast expanse of water on which the country is dependent for trade and natural resources. Consequently, situational awareness of the underwater domain and the capacity to act within it is critical for our national security and economy.
Wireless communications play a crucial role in undersea operations, facilitating joint efforts between ships and divers, relaying information between submarines and drones, enhancing situational awareness, and more. Without effective communications, a submerged vessel cannot effectively integrate into broader operations.
Approach
Acoustic technologies are a preferred choice for long-distance underwater communications, but face issues with limited resources (e.g. narrow bandwidth, limited power), long propagation delay and multipath effect, which result in the degradation of reliability and heightened energy use. Iftekhar and the team are forging ahead on a 2-phase project to solve these issues.
In the first phase, the team will develop a novel resource management system to tackle the complexities of resource sharing in long-range acoustics. This system will efficiently manage multiple underwater nodes, facilitating more efficient long-distance communications.
During phase 2, the team will incorporate their system into an underwater drone, providing them an opportunity to trial and refine the platform for use in underwater environments.
Outcome
The team’s efforts won’t exclusively converge on the integration of their system within drones. Their advancements in underwater communications will have diverse influence, enhancing diver-to-diver communication, empowering fully autonomous underwater drones, and improving underwater surveillance.
This partnership between academia, industry, and defence is pioneering systems that will support the nation’s security. Iftekhar and his team aim to improve underwater resource management for reliable acoustic communications, playing a role in the continual efforts to ensure the safety of Australian oceans.
