Abstract
Recent years have seen a growing interest in underwater communication and some progress has been made in this area. However, underwater communication is still immature compared with terrestrial communication. A prime reason for this is that the underwater environment is intrinsically not suitable for propagation of electric waves. Instead, ultrasonic waves are mainly used for underwater communication. Since ultrasonic waves cannot provide sufficient communication speed or capacity, they cannot use existing network technologies, which assume use of radio waves. In particular, communication in shallow water is still an uncharted territory. Few communication technologies are employed in environments where people enjoy scuba diving. This paper addresses problems faced by recreational scuba divers. It proposes constructing an ad hoc mesh-shaped network between divers within a group and use ultrasonic waves as transmission media in order to enable the detection of a stray diver. It also proposes a communication protocol in which messages are relayed in multiple hops, and a message collision avoidance method, which is intended to reduce the rate of packet loss caused by message propagation delay. We have implemented the proposed methods in a network simulator, and compared them with an existing communication method that has no message collision avoidance function, in terms of the packet loss rate, the stray driver detection rate, and the rate of the ability to communicate in multiple hops.
Highlights
Underwater communication is required in a wide range of fields, such as marine environment survey, seabed resource survey, and fishery
Underwater communication technology is expected to make recreational diving more enjoyable and safer. It is considered difficult for scuba divers to make verbal communication, and they usually use hand signals to transmit a variety of information
The present paper proposes a multi-hop message communication protocol that allows scuba divers to communicate with other divers in a group using ultrasonic waves so that they can check whether any member has gone astray
Summary
Underwater communication is required in a wide range of fields, such as marine environment survey, seabed resource survey, and fishery. This paper focuses on an underwater short-range communication service for scuba divers. Underwater communication technology is expected to make recreational diving more enjoyable and safer It is considered difficult for scuba divers to make verbal communication, and they usually use hand signals to transmit a variety of information. The present paper proposes a multi-hop message communication protocol that allows scuba divers to communicate with other divers in a group using ultrasonic waves so that they can check whether any member has gone astray. It discusses the characteristics of underwater propagation attenuation and proposes a method of avoiding channel contention in underwater communication.
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