Acoustic Data Transfer Limits Using an Underwater Vehicle in Very Shallow Water

Abstract

Advances in Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) using acoustic communications to transfer relatively high rate downloads of mission information are crucial to future Navy objectives, particularly in Very Shallow Water Mine Countermeasures (VSW MCM). Present understanding is primarily based on fixed node experiments rather than quantified by vehicles working in the real environment. This paper reports on the demonstrated limits of high speed asymmetric acoustic data transfer using an AUV in an adverse very shallow water environment. A comprehensive series of studies in multiple channel geometries was completed using a “state of the art” commercially available modem system installed on the NPS ARIES autonomous underwater vehicle. The maximum operating range for effective high speed data transfer in very shallow water from a dynamic AUV with all integrated systems active was about 300 meters in the horizontal plane with nearly 100% reliability, at bit rates up to a maximum of 800 bits/second.