Adaptive and Reliable Underwater Wireless Video Streaming Using Data Muling

The demand for cost-effective broadband wireless underwater communications has increased in the past few years, motivated by the video collection performed by Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) in areas such as environmental monitoring and oil and gas industries. However, the current technological limitations make it hard to implement a viable broadband wireless communications system for transferring the large amounts of data collected. Existing underwater communications solutions, using wireless optical or Radio Frequency (RF), limit high definition wireless video transfer to distances up to tens of meters. In case of underwater acoustic communications, long ranges can be achieved, but the low bandwidth makes them unsuitable for video streaming, even for standard definition video.In this paper we propose a solution, named Underwater Adaptive and Reliable Video Streaming (UARVS), that offers a video streaming service built upon the GROW data muling approach. UARVS exploits the use of data mules – small and agile AUVs – that travel between two physical nodes, bringing the data from an underwater survey unit to a central station at the surface. To validate the solution, an experimental testbed was built using airtight PVC cylinders, on a freshwater tank. The experimental results obtained show that UARVS enables an adaptive and continuous flow of video, avoids butter underruns, and reacts to data mule losses and delays.