Experimental Verification Of Underwater Mobile Sensing Network

An underwater mobile sensing network (UMSN), which comprises of a group of acoustically linked and cooperative autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with onboard sensors, is very suitable for the fast servey in some specific areas. Compared with fixed observatories or single capable AUV, an UMSN is much more flexible, efficient, robust and precise. Although many theories involved in UMSN have been developed, few of them have been verified by experiments due to environmental, technological and cost constraints.In order to solve these problems, a low-cost test bed for experimental verification of UMSN was developed, funded by National High Technology Research and Development Program (863). Hardware, software and control system were developed in quite short time with relatively low cost so that the test bed could simulate the basic function of UMSN. Based on the ranging function of acoustic MODEM, a new approach of acoustic positioning is proposed which combined the communication and positioning system together. As a result, the cost is reduced and the deployment is much easier. Confliction-free communication/positioning protocol are also proposed, which coordinates the underwater acoustic network communication and positioning. Experiment including deployment, recovery and path-following were completed. Results verify the effectiveness of the theories and approaches developed and thus verify the feasibility of underwater mobile sensing network.