SBIR Phase II:Developing a Real-time High-data-rate Multicarrier Underwater Acoustic Modem

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to develop a real-time high-data-rate multicarrier underwater acoustic modem for aquatic applications. The modem to be developed will achieve a data rate that is more than one order of magnitude higher than all competing commercial products in challenging shallow water environments. It will have robust error performance in the presence of impulse-like noise and undesired disruptions. In addition, the modem will be power efficient to sustain long operation time, have a user-friendly interface, and maintain an easily-extendable architecture to facilitate advanced networking functionalities. Bringing the advanced multicarrier technology into the underwater modem market, this project solves one long-standing problem in the field, i.e., making multicarrier modulation work in underwater channels (earlier attempts all had only limited success). With one order of magnitude data rate increase, this project will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in underwater telemetry. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is that the high-data-rate multicarrier underwater acoustic modem will significantly improve the operation of a wide range of aquatic applications, such as underwater environmental observation for scientific exploration, commercial exploitation, and coastline-protection/target-detection in military or anti-terrorism. It will also directly facilitate the development of emerging and fast-developing underwater wireless sensor networks and autonomous underwater vehicle networks. The significantly enhanced monitoring capability of aquatic environments will help us better understand and exploit the earth, preserve and protect it for our future generations. As more than 85% of underwater applications are envisioned to be in shallow water, this project will have enormous commercial impact in multiple market sectors including environment, energy, fishing, tourism, and national defense, etc.