Development and Demonstration of a Live Data Streaming Capability Using an Underwater Acoustic Communication Link

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) offer an automated solution for the collection of environmental data underwater. While they provide an effective solution in scenarios where their task is limited to basic sensor data collection, supervisory control by an operator is still needed to make more complicated decisions. Because raw data of camera and sonar data is too large in size to be communicated acoustically underwater, the assessment of data is performed post mission. This delayed access can however lead to ineffective data collection (if the data quality is found to be insufficient post mission) and longer operations that depend on the data can only be done after the data has been collected. In order to enhance the situational awareness and decision-making capabilities of AUV operators, we investigate and demonstrate in this paper the feasibility of underwater acoustic streaming of camera and sonar data. First, the performance of the underwater acoustic MSFRSS modulation is investigated by means of channel replay simulations. Next, the efficiency of the JPEG 2000 image compression and HEVC video compression protocols is analysed. Finally, the combined performance of these two technologies is tested in the TNO anechoic basin (water tank) using a demonstration setup. Although further tests of the system under more realistic operational conditions are needed to quantify its performance, the first results are promising and indicate that live underwater acoustic streaming is a realistic future capability of AUVs.