Smart Dust for Large Scale Underwater Wireless Sensing (USMART)
Wireless sensor networks using radio technology are used to gather data in many applications for infrastructure monitoring, environment monitoring and security.
However, this technology cannot be directly applied under water since radio waves are absorbed by water. Technologies exist for underwater communication using acoustic waves (sound) to carry data but this is a complex and demanding task requiring sophisticated processing.
Hence, these devices are expensive; costing between £5-£20,000, bulky and power hungry, which has generally limited their use to relatively small numbers and short duration.
The aim of this project is to create a smart underwater sensing framework based on ultra-low-cost underwater communication and sensing devices known as'smart dust'.
The Underwater Information Systems group at York focused on developing network protocols to allow large numbers of underwater acoustic nodes to form a sensor network able to reliably extract the maximum information available from the limited resources available.
This has the potential to transform underwater sensor networks to allow long term monitoring with high spatial resolution, frequent updates and near real-time data delivery in a way that previously has been cost prohibitive and impractical.
In collaboration with Newcastle and Heriot-Watt Universities, the underwater acoustic network (UAN) protocols designed at York were developed into a hardware prototype USMART network, which was deployed in trials on the University of York east campus lake, on Loch Earn in Scotland, and in the North Sea.
In addition to developing new protocols for underwater acoustic networks, the team at York has also developed an acoustic channel modelling tool specifically aimed at UAN protocol design; an interactive online version of this tool is available here.
