Integrated comunication network for underwater applications: the SWARMs approach

The exploitation of marine resources and underwater raw materials and the monitoring of the oceanic environment increases the fields of application of robotic autonomous and manned platforms. The management of heterogeneous mixes of these vehicles needs high performance reliable and robust communication systems able to cover medium long distances, to assure enough bandwidth to transfer vehicles status data and pictures/videos and to be flexible to adapt the network configuration to the specific scenarios and applications. The challenging conditions of the underwater environment impose several constraints to the available communication systems, so the full network shall be a trade-off between different requirements and performances. This paper describes some new solutions implemented in the ECSEL co-funded European project “Smart and Networking UnderWAter Robots in Cooperation Meshes” (SWARMs). The proposed approach is to select, combine and integrate available heterogeneous communication technologies, components and solutions, developing specific adaptations and modifications to improve performances for the remote management and control of swarm of underwater vehicles.