Surface Waves Analysis of Efficient Underwater Radio-Based Wireless Link

Abstract

The domain of underwater wireless communication (UWC) link is gaining much attention due to an increase in various underwater activities such as offshore hydrocarbon exploration, underwater unmanned vehicles (UUV), and military practices. Increased bandwidth and a reliable data link are mainly required for such activities. Both requirements of the domain are heavily affected by the highly conductive property of the seawater. This paper demonstrates the performance evaluation of radiofrequency-UWC, focusing on surface wave analysis, to propose a reliable solution for offshore activities. A constructive interference scheme can be useful due to the sharp difference in the properties of the two mediums (air and seawater). To that end, an experimental setup is created, and a corresponding finite element method (FEM) based simulation of the radio-based wireless link is run. This is because it has higher bandwidth and speed than acoustic and optical approaches. A conduction current mechanism transmits and receives data in a synthetic water tank containing a prepared conductive media (saltwater). The study of changing depths of transmitter-receiver nodes in saltwater shows that surface waves cause significant noise reception in shallow water (less than dipole length, below water level). During a series of experiments in the tank, the lowest bit error rate (BER) is observed only when the node’s submerged height was greater than dipole length. As a result, it is meant to provide a genuine data channel model. The discovery and analysis will aid in the development of a dependable underwater data link, with applications including short-range diver-to-diver communication, and UUV capability.