Bringing Underwater Networking to the 21st Century

Abstract

The state of underwater networking today is similar to ARPANET back in the 1970s, when only a select few people with expensive hardware resources had access to the technology. We present the first acoustic system that brings underwater networking capabilities to existing mobile devices like smartphones and smart watches. Our software-only solution leverages audio sensors, i.e., microphones and speakers, ubiquitous in today's devices, to enable acoustic underwater communication between mobile devices. To achieve this, we design a communication system that adapts in real-time to differences in frequency responses across mobile devices, changes in multipath and noise levels at different locations and dynamic channel changes due to mobility. We evaluate our system in six different real-world underwater environments in the presence of boats, ships and people fishing and kayaking. With the release of Apple Watch Ultra that is specifically designed for underwater settings, our software-based approach has the potential to democratize underwater networking capabilities by making them widely available to anyone with a mobile device.