A First-of-its-kind Low Size, Weight and Power Run-Time Reconfigurable Underwater Modem

Low size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C), flexible programmability and rapid run-time reconfigurability are desired features for the design of adaptive, underwater wireless communication modems for micro autonomous underwater vehicle (μAUV) swarms. In this paper, we present a first generation software and hardware design of a new class of low SWaP-C underwater modems that can accommodate wideband acoustic front-ends and achieve μ-level reconfigurability during run-time. We investigate the benefits of dynamically mapping certain signal processing operations of the acoustic communication stack to the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and others to the embedded processing system of the modem’s System-on-Chip and demonstrate data rates up to 2000 bps in ranges up to 50 m with the implementation of custom programmable logic. We test and evaluate power consumption, wireless link performance and speed of reconfiguration for two communications schemes: Binary Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) and Fast Frequency Hopping FSK both with simulations and field experiments.