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.

海上通讯的进步严重落后于其土地对应。现有的海洋通信技术通常具有非常有限的容量，并且运营非常昂贵。要求新颖的解决方案满足宽带海洋移动无线访问的迫在眉睫的要求。 该项目的目的是通过开发长远的自动海洋无线通信链接来填补海洋宽带无线通信的空白。 海洋无线链接由紧凑，无维护和低成本的浮动无线基站（BS）组成，可以简单地放入水中。一旦进入水，BS开始从海浪中收集能量，并建立彼此的通信联系。因此，可以通过这些链接将用户的宽带流量传递到Internet。该项目将为海洋传播带来革命性的变化。这项技术可以实现新的海上网络应用程序和操作方案，但在过去的高度可取。 它可能会对海洋相关行业的各个方面产生重大影响，例如捕鱼，休闲划船，海洋运输，石油和天然气行业，海洋科学研究以及国家安全和国防。该项目将重点放在两个推力区域上：推力1是关于海浪能量收获的。 为了使BS提供较大的覆盖范围和向其用户和其他BSS的高容量链接，BS必须消耗大量能量。 现有技术的尺寸太大，因此很昂贵，很难在粗糙的海洋状态下稳定，需要频繁维护。该项目通过建立一个新型的海浪能量收割机来解决这一关键挑战，该收割机可以有效地在典型的海洋状态下以直径小于1米的浮标收获数十瓦的电力。推力2是关于建立高容量的海洋通信链接。不断移动的海浪会影响BSS之间回程链路的容量，稳定性和范围。 在这个项目中，我们将研究如何分析和建模频道和设计天线和无线电硬件，以处理海洋通信链路的复杂渠道。研究人员还将研究海洋通信链接的独特特征及其对网络通信的潜在有益和/或有害影响。