Joint Sensing, Localization, and Communication for Next-Generation Autonomous Underwater Systems Project

Project description 

• Funding agency: WASP Sweden

• PI: Isaac Skog

• Co-PI: Gustaf Hendeby (LiU)

• Project partners: Saab Dynamics

• Duration: 2023 - 2028

Historically, Sweden holds a strong position in underwater technology, with world-class submarines and autonomous underwater systems. In 2014, the Swedish government added the underwater domain to a list of vital strategic interest areas where Sweden would seek to retain technological and operational advantage. An important component needed to ensure that Sweden remains at the technological forefront within this domain is the development of new technologies for sensing, localization, and communication in complex underwater environments. These are core technologies required to develop the situation-awareness and cooperation capabilities envisioned by next-generation autonomous underwater systems. A generation of autonomous underwater systems that are foreseen to increase ocean productivity, improve the protection of critical infrastructure, and improve the monitoring and protection of ocean health and its wildlife.

Most autonomous underwater systems treat sensing, localization, and communication tasks separately. Nor are these tasks tightly integrated with the decision-making process in the autonomous systems. This causes a suboptimal utilization of available resources, such as energy, communication bandwidth, location information, etc., which typically are very limited within subsurface systems. However, as envisioned for sixth-generation (6G) cellular systems, the possibility of designing solutions for joint sensing, localization, and communication in autonomous underwater and multi-agent systems is emerging. This is possible thanks to the rapid development of fully digital sonar signal processing chains, massive hydrophone arrays, and energy-efficient data processing units. However, several signal processing and machine learning-related challenges must be solved before these envisioned joint sensing, localization, and communication solutions can be realized. Some of the most important are: “How should the communication signals be designed to maximize the gathered sensing and localization information?”, “How can reliable and real-time usable channel models and maps of the acoustic environment be learned online?”, and “How should, in a distributed fashion, decisions about what to communicate and when be taken, given that each information exchange also generates new information both on the transmitting and receiving side?”. To answer some of these questions and contribute to solving these challenges, the project aims to research techniques for:

• Optimal communication signals design with respect to gained sensing and localization information, i.e., maximum echo sounding accuracy for perception and maximum ranging accuracy for multi-lateration.

• Online learning of models and maps that describe the acoustic environments and their disturbances using first-order physical principles in conjugate with non-parametric data models

• Distributed sensor-fusion and communication management that enables cooperative sensing and localization in multi-agent autonomous underwater systems using specially designed communication signals and where the acoustic footprint is minimized.