A Universal Multimode (Acoustic, Magnetic Induction, Optical, RF) Software Defined Radio Architecture for Underwater Communication

Various underwater communication applications are proposed to maintain different economic, environmental, and security gains. To support the high quality of service (QoS) requirements of the involved communication tasks, one solution is to rely on multi-mode (i.e., acoustic, optical, magnetic induction (MI), and radio frequency (RF)) communication systems. Such a multi-mode communication system can take advantage of the complementary modes’ features, to obtain QoS requirements per transmission flow. However, challenges including high system cost and coordination between different modes need to be addressed. Therefore, in this paper a Universal Underwater Software Defined Radio (UniSDR) architecture is proposed that realizes joint operation of different modes, in order to deal with the latest use cases demands. Detailed description of the UniSDR architecture is presented. Novelty of the architecture provides flexibility, allowing designer to build a radio that includes any set of modes, which can operate jointly by exchanging data, control and synchronization. A numerical evaluation is conducted to assess the performance of the proposed UniSDR architecture. It clearly shows that the utilization of UniSDR allows to decrease the transmission latency and improve energy efficiency, while maintaining the reliability and robustness.