Resilience against shipping noise and interference of the AHOI acoustic underwater modem

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) and micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (µAUVs) enable diverse underwater monitoring and service applications; e. g., observation of water quality or identification of pollution. Reliable underwater communication for data transmission between sensors, µAUVs and base stations is required. The smartPORT acoustic underwater modem AHOI is a small, low-power and low-cost modem, which was developed for these applications. This paper evaluates the modem’s resilience against shipping noise and packet interference in UWSNs. At first, noise and interference sources are presented, followed by a short description of the modems’s countermeasures. At last, simulated noise of ships and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) with different distances to the noise source were added to the communication signals and evaluated. And in addition, packet interference was simulated and evaluated in a real-world scenario.