NeTS: Small: Long-range Ocean Communication Links Powered by Energy Harvesting

NeTS：小型：由能量收集提供支持的远程海洋通信链路

• 批准号: 1527239
• 负责人: Yaling Yang
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-10-01 至 2018-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1527239&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NeTS; Small; Long; range; Ocean

Advancements in maritime communications are severely lagging behind its land counterpart. Existing marine communication technologies usually have very limited capacity and are extremely expensive to operate. Novel solutions are demanded to meet the imminent requirements for broadband marine mobile wireless access. The purpose of this project is to fill the void of marine broadband wireless communications by developing long-range self-powered ocean wireless communication links. The ocean wireless link is composed of compact, maintenance-free and low cost floating wireless base stations (BS) that can be simply dropped into the water. Once in the water, the BSs start to harvest energy from ocean waves and establish communication links with each other. Users' broadband traffic, then, can be delivered to the Internet through these links. This project will bring revolutionary change to the maritime communications. New maritime networked applications and operation scenarios that are infeasible but highly desirable in the past can be enabled by this technology. It can have significant impact on all aspect of ocean related industry, such as fishing, recreational boating, marine transportation, oil and gas industry, ocean scientific study, and national security and defense.The project will focus on two thrust areas: Thrust 1 is about ocean wave energy harvesting. For a BS to provide large coverage range and high capacity links to its users and other BSs, the BS must consume a large amount of energy. Existing technologies are too large in size and hence are expensive and hard to be stabilized in rough ocean states and require frequent maintenance. This project solves this critical challenge by building a novel ocean wave energy harvester that can effectively harvest tens of watts of power on typical ocean states with a floating buoy of less than 1 meter diameter. Thrust 2 is about building the high capacity marine communication links. The constantly moving ocean waves can affect the capacity, stability and range of the backhaul links among BSs. In this project, we will study how to analyze and model the channel and design antenna and radio hardwares to handle the complex channel of ocean communication links. The researchers will also study the unique features of ocean communication links and their potential beneficial and/or harmful impact on network communications.

海上通信的进步严重落后于陆地通信。现有的海洋通信技术通常容量非常有限，而且运营成本极其昂贵。需要新颖的解决方案来满足宽带海洋移动无线接入的迫切要求。 该项目的目的是通过开发远程自供电海洋无线通信链路来填补海洋宽带无线通信的空白。 海洋无线链路由紧凑、免维护且低成本的浮动无线基站 (BS) 组成，只需将其放入水中即可。一旦进入水中，基站就开始从海浪中收集能量并相互建立通信链路。用户的宽带流量就可以通过这些链路传送到互联网。该项目将为海上通信带来革命性的变化。过去不可行但非常理想的新的海上网络应用和操作场景可以通过该技术实现。 它可以对海洋相关产业的各个方面产生重大影响，如渔业、休闲划船、海洋运输、石油和天然气工业、海洋科学研究以及国家安全和国防。该项目将重点关注两个主推领域：主推1是关于海浪能量收集。 为了向其用户和其他BS提供大覆盖范围和高容量链路，BS必须消耗大量能量。 现有技术规模太大，因此价格昂贵，并且难以在恶劣的海洋状态下保持稳定，并且需要频繁维护。该项目通过建造一种新型海浪能量采集器解决了这一关键挑战，该能量采集器可以通过直径小于 1 米的浮动浮标在典型海洋状态下有效采集数十瓦的电力。主旨 2 是关于建设高容量海洋通信链路。不断移动的海浪会影响基站之间回程链路的容量、稳定性和范围。 在这个项目中，我们将研究如何对信道进行分析和建模，并设计天线和无线电硬件来处理海洋通信链路的复杂信道。研究人员还将研究海洋通信链路的独特特征及其对网络通信的潜在有益和/或有害影响。