CyberSEES: Type 1: A Pilot Study on Cognitive Acoustic Underwater Networks (CAUNet)

for Sustainable Ocean Monitoring and Exploration
National Science Foundation
10/01/2013 -- 09/30/2015

Project Summary   Project Objectives   Participants   Publications   Outreach and Collaboration Activities  

 
Project Summary
    

The earth is a blue planet. Over 70% of it is covered by the ocean. The sheer quantity of marine lives it contains far exceeds those ever habitat the land. The vast yet largely unexplored
ocean has not only fascinated generations of human beings by providing seemly endless resources but also poses challenges as how to explore and exploit the ocean in sustainable ways.


Underwater Acoustic Networks (UANs) has recently emerged as a promising technique that can facilitate a wide range of aquatic applications, such as scientific exploration, commercial
exploitation and coastline protection. Existing work usually assumes that the network takes full control over designated frequency band(s). However, in real applications, multiple acoustic
systems, including UANs, acoustic telemetry instruments and marine lives, may co-exist and affect the performance of each other. Moreover, there are growing concerns about the effect
of man-made noise (from UANs, oil drilling, sonar systems, etc.) on marine animals. In short, environmental awareness is the key to sustainable ocean monitoring and exploration. How to
solve these issues is the subject of this project.

 

 
Project Objectives
    

To meet the ever growing requirements of the ocean monitoring and exploration applications, and to preserve a sustainable blue ocean for next generations, in this project, we propose
to design a cognitive acoustic underwater network (CAUNet) that can be aware of the coexistence of multiple underwater acoustic systems. We identify and tackle several fundamental issues,
including acoustic spectrum sensing, management, and usage, as summarized below.

  1. Task I -- Acoustic spectrum usage: A CAUNet can never be truly environmental aware without knowing the real environment. In this project, we propose to empirically evaluate the acoustic spectrum usage by conducting an environment assessment in Long Island Sound, Connecticut.
  2. Task II -- Acoustic spectrum sensing: For a CAUNet to be environment-aware, a key problem is to design high-performance spectrum sensing devices and algorithms. Based on some real sea test data collected in the past, we propose a novel hybrid spectrum sensing approach to improve performance in terms of accuracy and reliability.
  3. Task III -- Acoustic spectrum management: In UANs, a large portion of the acoustic spectrum is often used sporadically. In order to improve spectrum efficiency, we propose a sender initiated
    negotiation based MAC protocol to enable interference avoidance and seamless acoustic communications.
 
Participants
    
Faculty
Participants		      The project team consists of three investigators from three institutions with complementary expertise required by this project. They carry out the proposed research activities collaboratively to realize the project goals. The members of the research team bring a unique and complementary qualifications to this research project, with recognized strength in the areas of underwater acoustic networks, scheduling and spectrum management, algorithm design and analysis, and underwater sound with marine animals.
  • Dr. Zheng Peng, University of Connecticut, PI, with expertise in the area of networking, especially in underwater acoustic networks.
  • Dr. Wei Cheng, Virginia Commonwealth University, PI, with expertise in cognitive wireless networking, scheduling and resource management, and algorithm design.
  • Dr. Mardi Hastings, Georgia Institute of Technology, PI, with expertise in the interaction of underwater sound with marine animals, including its effects on hearing, behavior and physical injury.
 
Student
Participants
 		     The following PhD students led by Dr. Z. Peng, Dr. W. Cheng, and Dr. M. Hastings are to perform the research activities proposed for this project.
  • Yu Luo, PhD student at UCONN, Co-Advised by Dr. Z. Peng
  • Xiaolu Cheng, PhD student at VCU, Advised by Dr. W. Cheng
  • Sean Kilgallin, PhD student at GA Tech, Advised by Dr. M. Hastings
 
Publications

    Journal Papers:

  1. Yu Luo, Lina Pu, Michael Zuba, Zheng Peng, Jun-Hong Cui, "Challenges and Opportunities of Underwater Cognitive Acoustic Networks", IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 198 - 211, 2014.

    Conference Papers:

  2. Yu Luo, Lina Pu, Zheng Peng, Yibo Zhu, Jun-Hong Cui, "RISM: An Efficient Spectrum Management System for Underwater Cognitive Acoustic Networks", in
    Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), Singapore, 2014.
  3. Wei Cheng, Yu Luo, Zheng Peng, Mardi Hastings, "A Framework of Acoustic Channel Availability Prediction for Avoiding Interfering Marine Mammals", to appear in WUWNet 2014 as an extended abstract.
 
Outreach and Collaboration Activities
     The major objectives of the outreach activities relevant to this project include (i) attract talented US based students to science and engineering, and to disseminate our findings and outcomes to the research community; (ii) Enhance the collaborations with Underwater Acoustic Network Researchers.
  1. The PIs and the students have been discussing the join work in their biweekly Skype meetings since the start of the project.
  2. Dr. Z. Peng attended WUWNet 2013 in Taiwan, November 11-13, 2013, and introduced the project work in the conference.
  3. Dr. W. Cheng has visited UCONN for several times. He had participated in the first project testbed deployment in Long Island, CT, and had a few meetings with Dr. Z. Peng to review the progress and discuss the collaborative research.
  4. Dr. Peng attended SECON 2014 in Singapore and introduced the project work in the conference.