R&D of a low-complexity OFDM acoustic communication payload for Micro-AUV in confined space

With small size, high flexibility, low cost, and deployment convenience, Micro-sized autonomous underwater vehicle (Micro-AUV) is capable of performing diverse underwater missions efficiently in confined underwater space, for the extensive purpose of rescue, sightseeing, pipeline engineering and so on. The underwater acoustic (UWA) communication technique provides an effective way to support this types of underwater mission for telemetry and remote control of Micro-AUV. However, while the adverse multipath caused by confined space poses significant challenge to the classic coherent acoustic communication schemes that need channel estimation and equalization processing, the employment of non-coherent communication scheme is generally limited by low data rate. By utilizing time-domain and frequency-domain differential modulation to suppress the influence of multipath, a low-complexity UWA communication payload is designed to provide an effective solution to make a tradeoff between data rate and implementation complexity. Based on a STM32 series processor, this paper introduced the software and hardware implementation of a time-frequency differential OFDM UWA communication payload for Micro-AUV and presented the performance evaluation of the system in confined underwater space. The experimental results achieved in a confined lake show that the proposed system has the potential of being used for Micro-AUV to achieve a data rate of 1.96 kbps at a distance of 200m with acceptable implementation overhead.