Low cost adaptive underwater acoustic modem for the Black Sea environment

The success of terrestrial wireless sensor networks in monitoring various phenomena caused an increased interest to develop underwater sensor networks by the underwater acoustics community. These networks are based on underwater acoustic modems for real-time data transmission. The high cost and fixed architecture of these devises makes it impossible to implement dense wireless sensor networks adapted to the environment. We propose an adaptive architecture for a low cost underwater acoustic modem. Designing such a modem with adaptable parameters is determined by the zonal variability of the underwater channel. This article presents the results of a frequency dependent simulation for a particular underwater channel in the Black Sea for which we determined the distance dependent impulse response. The simulation results reinforce the idea of variability of the transmission channel and support the idea of designing an adaptive underwater acoustic modem. Underwater acoustic modem, frequency dependent simulation, underwater wireless sensor network, underwater acoustic channel.