A Software-defined Underwater Acoustic Networking Platform for Underwater Vehicles

Underwater vehicles (UVs) are becoming essential for a vast range of novel commercial, scientific and military applications. These include seabed exploration, monitoring of critical infrastructure and resources, and coastal surveillance. However, usage of UVs is currently beset by limitations preventing them to carry critical equipment, such as agile wireless communication systems, which would facilitate and enable those applications. To overcome these limitations, in this paper we present the design blueprint and evaluation of a wireless UV, obtained by integrating a custom software-defined underwater acoustic networking platform integrated to a UV. We first describe the integration of the platform with a commercially available UV. We then present results from experimental campaigns at sea using our wireless UV to generate datasets for studying the Doppler effect due to mobility. Our results indicate the effectiveness of our design for ease of deployment and dataset generation.