A Pilot Study on Cognitive Acoustic Underwater Networks (CAUNet) for Sustainable Ocean Monitoring and Exploration

National Science Foundation (Award No. 1331851)

10/01/2013 -- 09/30/2015

Project Summary

Environmental awareness is a key to sustainable ocean monitoring and exploration. To meet the ever growing requirements of the ocean monitoring and exploration applications, and to preserve a sustainable blue ocean for next generations, a underwater cognitive acoustic network (UCAN) that is aware of the coexistence of multiple underwater acoustic systems will be designed. The project goals include investigating acoustic spectrum usage via data collection and analysis, designing algorithms, software and hardware for acoustic spectrum sensing and spectrum management, and evaluating the feasibility and performance of the proposed work via simulations, and lab and field experiments.

This project will make significant contributions to the underwater network research community by improving the efficiency of UANs while making them more environmentally friendly. The research activities in this project also provide a rich environment and platform that can facilitate educating and training students from high school to graduate level and inspire students in underrepresented groups to pursue research in science and engineering. Moreover, this project could contribute to interdisciplinary research within the underwater communications, networking, engineering, and marine biology communities, and promote progress towards sustainable ocean monitoring and explorations. 

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 underwater cognitive acoustic network (UCAN) 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.

Project Participants

In this collaborative and interdisciplinary research, a group of investigators from three institutions with complementary expertise take active roles in 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.

Faculty Participants

• 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.
• Dr. Zheng Peng, University of Connecticut, PI, with expertise in the area of networking, especially in underwater acoustic networks.

Student Participants

• Xiaolu Cheng, PhD student at VCU, Advised by Dr. W. Cheng
• Sean Kilgallin, PhD student at GA Tech, Advised by Dr. M. Hastings
• Yu Luo, PhD student at UCONN, Co-Advised by Dr. Z. Peng

Project Publications

Journal Papers

• Yu Luo, Lina Pu, Michael Zuba, Zheng Peng and 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

• Yu Luo, Lina Pu, Zheng Peng, Yibo Zhu and 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.
• Wei Cheng, Yu Luo, Zheng Peng, Mardi Hastings, "A Framework of Acoustic Channel Availability Prediction for Avoiding Interfering Marine Mammals", submitted to 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.

Related Links

• NSF project abstract
• Project page at VCU by Dr. Wei Cheng