NeTS: Small: Enabling Long-Range Underwater Backscatter via Van-Atta Acoustic Networks

NetS：小型：通过 Van-Atta 声学网络实现远距离水下反向散射

• 批准号: 2308901
• 负责人: Fadel Adib
• 金额: $ 60万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-10-01 至 2026-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2308901&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NeTS; Small; Enabling; Long; Range

The ability to perform low-power long-range underwater sensing can have transformative impact on climatology, oceanography, marine biology, food security, defense, and even extra-terrestrial exploration. Motivated by the fact that over 95% of the ocean has not been observed or explored, this project aims to push the limits of scalable and low-power ocean sensing in order to scalably measure the ocean’s vital signs (temperature, pressure, salinity) for climate models, weather prediction, disaster response, and marine life discovery. Scalable and low-power underwater sensing also has important applications in food security, where it can support the world's fastest-growing food sector, aquaculture (seafood farming). To this end, the project will develop fundamental technologies that advance the ability for scalable ocean sensing and disseminate these technologies to the academic community, industry, and the broader public through publications, technology transfer, and public-facing videos about the developed technologies to increase public education and engagement with science, technology, and climate.The goal of this proposal is to design, build, and evaluate a low-power, long-range underwater backscatter network. Underwater backscatter is a new communication technology that consumes 5-6 orders of magnitude lower power than prior low-power underwater acoustic communication technologies. However, existing designs for underwater backscatter are limited in their communication range to within few to tens of meters, which restricts their scalability and application domains. To overcome this range limitation, this project explores retroreflective designs for underwater backscatter. In contrast to existing architectures which are inefficient because they backscatter underwater sound in all directions, the proposed designs will achieve much higher efficiency by backscattering sound retroreflectively to the sender. This retrodirectivity enables boosting the signal-to-noise ratio of the backscatter packets, which in turn boosts communication range, throughput, and scalability. To realize retroreflective underwater backscatter, the proposal will design Van-Atta architectures, which have been demonstrated over the past 50 years in the wireless RF (Radio Frequency) domain, but have never been applied before in underwater environments or acoustic networks. The proposal will explore designs that enable 2D and 3D retrodirectivity through Van-Atta arrays, implement these designs into practical systems, and develop them into end-to-end scalable networks for both underwater communication and localization. If successful, the resulting system will be the first to enable low-power long-range underwater backscatter, paving the way for scalable networked sensing of underwater environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

由于未观察或探索95％的海洋，该项目旨在推动可扩展和低功率海洋传感器的限制，以便能够可扩展地测量海洋的生命体征（温度，压力，盐度），以攀登模型，天气预测，灾害预测，灾难反应和海洋生命发现。可扩展和低功率的水下敏感性在粮食安全方面也有重要应用，它可以支持世界上增长最快的食品领域水产养殖（海鲜养殖）。为此，该项目将开发基本技术，以提高可扩展海洋敏感性的能力，并通过出版物，技术转移和公共面向公众的视频将这些技术传播给学术界，行业和更广泛的公众，以提高公共教育和与科学，技术和气候的互动。水下反向散射是一种新的通信技术，比以前的低功率水下声音通信技术要消耗5-6个数量级的功率。但是，水下反向散射的现有设计在其沟通范围内受到限制至几英尺以内，这限制了其可扩展性和应用域。为了克服此范围限制，该项目探索了水下反向散射的逆转录侵流设计。与现有的架构效率低下的现有体系结构相反，因为它们在各个方向上向后散射的水下声音，拟议的设计将通过反射到发件人的反向散射声音来实现更高的效率。这种转化方向可以提高反向散射数据包的信噪比，从而提高了通信范围，吞吐量和可扩展性。为了实现逆转录水的水下反向散射，该提案将设计Van-Atta体系结构，在过去的50年中，在无线RF（射频）域中已证明，但从未在水下环境或声学网络中应用。该提案将探讨通过Van-Atta阵列启用2D和3D转化导向的设计，将这些设计实施到实用系统中，并将其开发为端到端可伸缩网络，以进行水下通信和本地化。如果成功的话，最终的系统将是第一个实现低功率长时间水下反向散射的系统，为水下环境的可扩展网络敏感性铺平了道路。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来评估来通过评估来获得的支持。