Communication and control of autonomous underwater vehicles using radio frequency-acoustic hybrid MAC schemes

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1649232 (Table of Contents)

In shallow water subsea applications like control of AUVs, there is a growing demand of high-speed wireless communication links for transmitting data between AUVs and base station. Acoustic communication provide very low data rates and high propagation delays not suitable for high gain and high speed control of AUVs and on other hand radio communication is constrained by very high attenuation due to high conductivity and permittivity of water resulting in a very short working range. In this thesis, an Acoustic-RF hybrid communication system is proposed which uses acoustic link for long range communication and switches to Radio Frequency in close range. The system is tested on docking station model where AUVs get their location from transmitter at docking station and control the motors on AUVs to land on docking station. We show that this hybrid system solves the need of robust communication link as well as high data rate and low latency requirement of AUV communication. Three MAC schemes namely TDMA, Slotted ALOHA and Waiting Room are tested and compared in acoustic communication.