A Comparison of the Performance of Four Acoustic Modulation Techniques for Robot Communication in Pipes

Abstract

Autonomous robotics is an emerging technology for the inspection of a vast network of underground pipes. Communication between autonomous robots is essential to optimise their efficiency and network coverage. However, sending a message acoustically is not a well-researched topic because most of the existing literature is devoted to the study of the acoustic properties of the pipe for the purpose of sensing rather than communication. In particular, the influence of multi-modal propagation and background noise on the quality of acoustic communication in pipes has not been well understood. This paper studies the performance of four standard acoustic communication techniques in a dry drainage pipe to fill this knowledge gap. The noise resistance, communication range and data rate of these techniques are estimated through numerical simulations and laboratory experiments. It has been found that the techniques based on shift keying requires at least 5--10 dB signal to noise ratio (SNR) to function properly while the chirp linear frequency modulation technique can operate reliably with SNR = 0 dB or event lower SNR. The results also suggest that the multi-modal propagation in the pipe has significant effects on the package error rate. The frequency dependent sound attenuation in the pipe also affects the communication range and data rate. In particular, for a 150 mm diameter dry pipe the maximum robot operation distance is likely to be limited to 50--100 m with the highest carrier frequency of around 10 kHz and data rates below 6300 bps. The results of this work pave the way to the development of acoustic communication modules to be deployed on tetheless robots designed to inspect a buried pipe network autonomously and collaboratively.