Hybrid Acoustic/Optic Communications in
Underwater Swarms
Dr. Claudio Moriconi and Ing. Giacomo Cupertino
Robotics Lab
ENEA
Rome, Italy
claudio.moriconi@enea.it
Abstract— The paper presents the first results of a research
aimed at the use of a combined opto-acoustic approach, allowing
a large band communication network in a harsh environment
like the underwater. The realisation of a special modem,
optimised for the highly dense swarm is also presented together
with a first realization of an optical transducer suitable for a
wireless 3D networking operation.
Keywords—underwater wireless communication network;
acoustic modem; dense swarm;
I. INTRODUCTION
The use of teams or swarms of AUV in the monitoring of
basins of coasts and continental waters offer huge advantages
with respect to the exploitation of single, sophisticated but
expensive robots and pose a number of peculiar problems that
are still under investigation. Moreover, the special topic of
dense swarms, where the distance among the vessels is of
meters or tens of meters with respect to the hundreds of meters
that are generally the mean value of distance among
cooperating vessels, introduces additional issues. Perhaps the
most relevant of these issues is in the availability of reliable
and fast enough data channels, tailored on the peculiar needs of
these high density systems. The underwater communication is
under development since several years, but the set of features
that are characteristic of large numbers of communicating
nodes that moves along a tri-dimensional space has not yet
discussed in depth. Harness project, a research realised by the
team composed by ENEA, Tor Vergata University and Perugia
University and funded by the Italian Institute of Technology,
deals with the aforementioned issues.
II. FEATURES OF UNDERWATER SWARM NETWORKING
According with the preliminary work carried out within
Harness, the operation of an underwater robotics swarm like
the one ENEA is studying on its VENUS vessel, asks for the
availability of a communication network that is much beyond
the usual performances of the current underwater modems. For
this reason, a specifically designed modem has been
developed, the SWAN-SAR (SWArm Networking - Short
Acoustic Range), and is currently under testing. Its basic
characteristics are: relatively low power (to cope with short
distances data transmission), high modulation frequency (to
enhance the signal abatement and reduce the multipath effect),
capability to adapt many parameters of the modem to the
978-1-4799-8736-8/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
Prof. Silvello Betti and Dr. Marco Tabacchiera
Electronic Engineering Department
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Rome, Italy
silvello.betti@uniroma2.it
navigation environment. Because the swarm is a network with
an arbitrary 3D nodes distribution, that is also continuously
changing to self-adapt to the environment, the transducers must
be characterized by a radiation diagram close to a uniform 4ʌ
distribution. The energy requirement, the opposite need for a
wide band availability and the geometrical vincula before
mentioned imposes severe requests to the network engineering,
to the protocol and to the choice of the transducers.
As it is better shown in the following, we addressed our
research on the line of the implementation of a hybrid, multi
channel network, with a close synergy between the available
physical communication channels. The approach that is
currently under investigation is the combined use of acoustical
and opticals signals. Other possibilities could be investigated,
but this combination seems to be the most appropriate to the
characteristics of the dense networked swarms able to operate
in the open sea that the object of our study.
Another issue that heavily affects the system choices and
the network performances is the cardinality of the nodes in the
swarm.
The more advanced researches with similar approaches
(see, for instance, ICT projects and relevant papers produced
by CO3AUVs [1], CoCoro [2], Shoal, Noptilus [3]) are
oriented to the study and implementation of communication
networks able to allow a coordination among several units that
can carry out simultaneous and cooperating monitoring and
surveillance activities. Shoal project is one of the more recent
and interesting works. Results of this project have not been
extensively published yet, but the general approach of the
project appears to have a philosophy similar to the one of our
work, but with important differences. The cardinality is one of
these. In fact current experimental tests of other research labs
have been carried out with few units, quite often adopting a
point-to point connection. Alternatively, the connection can be
considered a broadcast one, but the complexity of messages is
maintained at very low levels (for instance, in the case of
CoCoRo project) pushing the research more on the issue of
local intelligence than on the network intelligence. In CoCoRo
approach, based on very small vehicles, the cardinality can be
high, but the message complexity is low, the signals very
simple and also the perfomances of each single agent/node are
limited by the physical dimensions so that monitoring of large
areas could become a difficult task.
 The complexity of this problem is further increased by the
consideration that in a dense swarm, where the communication
distance is deliberately kept low with the use of devices like
SWAN-SAR, the problem of message passing on large
distances is also a mandatory problem considering that these
swarms, depending on the application needs, can arrive to be
extended over hundreds of meters or more.
According to this last issue, the most suitable approach on
which we are working on, is referred to the development of a
clustered network where clusters are compatible with the
available range of communication (few tens of meters) and
represent unstable groups. The logic of the clusters (UCN –
Unstable Cluster Network) is aimed to allow the individuals to
subscribe to a new group, adjacent to its previous one, and to
unsubscribe from the old one. The topological and formation-
bounded rules to allow an effective implementation of this
organisation are currently under study.
This simplified scheme should substantially increase the
overall band pass of the network, also taking into account the
need for an intercluster channel and the cluster boundary
interferences that will decrease the maximum theoretical
network capacity. Our expectations are that with this approach
we could demonstrate that the dense swarm can become a
scalable system, able to operate both on small and on large
scales, without modifying the base communication equipment.
According to our preliminary studies, only the software
configuration should be modified when the scale of the system
increases substantially.
Coming back to the implementation of the communication
channels, it is to mention that the most practical optical
transducers are represented by LEDs and by communication
Lasers, but the last devices, despite their huge modulation
capability, show a transmission power lower by three or four
orders of magnitudes than LEDs so that they are impractical
for a suitable omnidirectional transmission and could be used
only in special cases that will be discussed in the following. On
the contrary, LEDs technology is evolving incredibly fast that
brought to increase their efficiency from around ten of lumen
per watt in the 90’s to beyond 250 lumen/watt of the current
experimental devices (Cree, 2013). Efficiencies as high as 140-
150 lumen/watt are currently available on the consumer market
at low cost [4], making these devices an exceptional
opportunity to a technology that must combine sophisticated
approaches and algorithms with very low cost (imposed by the
high number of the nodes/vessels contained in a swarm).
Moreover, it is also available quite a wide range of optical
frequencies, entering the possibility to develop a low-cost,
rough spectrum analyser of water characteristics on each vessel
and therefore to develop a very high speed measurement of the
distance among the nodes, alternative to the classical methods
based on the acoustical time of flight. This is a key issue for the
formation control of the wireless network and this kind of
device is as well under development by our research team.
III. ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
The acoustic signal transmission is for a while a well-
established technique for underwater sensing [7, 8] and
communication [9, 10]. After having modelled the underwater
acoustic communication channel [11] and having evaluated the
transmission capacity [12], a great work has been performed in
order to analyse, design and realize underwater networks based
on acoustic communications to evaluate their performance in
terms of throughput [13-18]. In this context, Underwater
Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) are of utmost importance
since they consist of sensors and vehicles deployed underwater
and networked in order to perform collaborative tasks [19-23].
A new paradigm is offered by the swarm configured
underwater acoustic networks SUAN (Swarm Underwater
Acoustic Network), which exploit swarm collective
intelligence and self-organization [24, 25]. The challenge is
that the performances exhibited by these networks should cope
with the needs of general wireless sensor networks [26] and,
specifically, to underwater robot networks [27].
As regards the Medium Access Control (MAC), several
protocols have been proposed for acoustic network such as, for
example, Aloha, DACAP, CSMA, and T-Lohi but, in all these
cases, acoustical propagation delay of RTS/CTS messages or
retransmissions dramatically reduces the network performance,
especially in high content conditions.
A preliminary model taking into account the needs of an
underwater swarm network has been introduced in [28]: in this
work the network parameters and the performance of the
acoustic channel have been derived for an efficient
communication among the robot-nodes. Moreover, the network
performance has been evaluated considering two possible
choices for MAC: Aloha and CSMA. It has been shown that
for “low mobility” conditions, Aloha turns out preferable than
CSMA while the opposite trend is verified when robot speed
increases. That preliminary result points out that the choice of
MAC protocol can notably depend on the application scenario.
The swarm dynamics and configurations influence on the
underwater acoustic network performance has been evaluated
in [29].
There are many underwater environment parameters
affecting the communication channels (acoustical, optical,
etc..) with a strong variability with the space and the time
caused by the salinity, the turbidity, the presence of dissolved
substances, the presence of streams, the temperature gradients
and many others. Depending on the modifications of these
parameters, the data transmission can take place with different
delays, attenuations, angular distributions of the radiated power
and so forth.
Usually, acoustical underwater networks are aimed at
covering few kilometres (maximum) in range and the off-the-
shelf devices available on the market are mostly optimized for
this kind of operation (carrier frequency generally included in
the range 500-10000 Hz). Unfortunately, this implies that only
low data-rates can be achieved and in case of networks with a
high number of nodes, this limited band must be shared among
them with a further decay of the performance. Moreover, the
long propagation delays of acoustic signals could become one
of the most severe limits for the network capacity and a more
suitable communication protocol is required to cope with the
communication latency.
Nevertheless, the acoustical signals still represent the most
widely used technique to ensure the communication among the
underwater vessels (often including buoys) and among them
and the ships. Underwater acoustic communications are
influenced by a number of factors that concur to determine the
temporal and spatial variability of the acoustic channel, and
limit the available bandwidth of the underwater acoustic
channels. Long-range systems that operate over several tens of
kilometres have a bandwidth of only some hundreds of Hz
while a short-range system operating over tens of meters or
less may have up to a MHz bandwidth.
The factors that influence acoustic communications in order
to state the challenges posed by underwater sensor networking
typically include:
• path loss, which consists of attenuation and geometric
spreading;
• noise, which can be divided in man-made noise and
ambient noise;
• multipath, which depends on propagation
geometry effects;
• high delay and delay variance;
• Doppler spread.
Most of the described factors are caused by the chemical-
physical properties of the water medium such as temperature,
salinity and density, and by their spatial-temporal variations.
These variations, together with the “waveguide” nature of the
channel, cause the acoustic channel to be temporally and
spatially variable.
According with the conditions that have been just discussed
before, a key parameter to achieve a correct operation of a
mobile sensing network is the inter-node distance. Whereas the
typical distance among the nodes in static networks or in robot
teams can be in the range of hundreds of meters we are
studying the behaviour of dense SUAN, with typical distance
among the nodes of just few meters up to few tens of meters.
For such a kind of SUAN, a good trade-off between bandwidth
and efficiency can be achieved by transducers operating around
400 kHz. This value is higher than those used in traditional
UAN, but at the same time implies a less harmful multipath
effect. A robust modulation format for acoustic shallow water
channel is M-Frequency Shift Keying (M-FSK) with M=4, 8
and 16. This multilevel modulation format is more prone to
contrast the multipath effects and can allow a low cost modem
implementation.
Generally, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) per bit can be
evaluated as [18]
PTX ( d )
SNR ( d , f ) =
A( d , f ) ⋅ N Tot ( f )
where PTX is the transmitted power, A(d, f) the attenuation over
the link between the transmitting node Tx and the receiving
node Rx, assumed at distance d. NTot(f) is the overall ambient
noise due to turbulence, shipping, waves and thermal noise.
The attenuation is given by
A( d , f ) = d k ⋅ a d (2)
where k is the energy spreading factor (k is 1 for cylindrical
and 2 for spherical spreading) and
α(f )
a = 10 10 (3)
is a frequency-dependent term, depending on the absorption
coefficient Į(f). The absorption coefficient for the frequency
range of interest is calculated according to Thorp’s expression
[28], expressed in dB/km and f in kHz
f2 f2
α( f ) = 0.11⋅ + 44⋅ + 2.75⋅10−4 f 2 + 0.003 (4)
1+ f 2 4100+ f 2
and The transmitted signal is correctly detected if the SNR
exceeds a proper threshold, which can be evaluated by
considering the sensitivity level of the receiver. This value is
obtained by the data sheets specifications of the transducers.
Specifically, for a Reson TC4034 transducer, the parameters
are: Receiving Voltage Sensitivity (RVS) of -218 dB
re1V/1μPa and Transmit Voltage Response (TVR) exceeding
140 dB re 1μPa/V@1m.
IV. OPTICAL COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
With respect to acoustic signal transmission, optical signals
have a much larger bandwidth but can propagate some tens or
hundreds of meters in water, depending on the turbidity [30,
31, 32]. Moreover, at short ranges they offer the possibility of
much higher data-rate communications, with almost zero
propagation delay.
Clear water is modestly transparent in the visible light
spectrum. Thus, an interesting alternative to acoustic links is in
the development of optical links where high data-rates (10-100
Mb/s up to 1 Gb/s, if laser is used) are achievable. A fading
rate of about 0.15~0.5dB/m is achievable in the blue-green
band (wavelength in the range 470~525 nm) in clear water,
thus the working range of underwater optical modems is on the
order of 100 m in the clearest water.
Moreover, the bit-per-Joule energy required for optical data
transmission is much less than acoustics, allowing a limited
battery usage also for large data transfers.
If limited to short distances, the use of the optical channel
solves the problem of low-speed transmission and low data-
rate of acoustic signals.
(1) While absorption depends mainly on the optical signal
wavelength, scattering is due to the suspended sediment or
particles, which diffuse the light in all directions. Scattering
reduces signal levels but also limit the maximum data rate
when temporal pulse stretching, due to multipath effects, is
comparable to the bit time. It depends on a variety of geometric
factors in addition to water quality, including source beam
divergence, propagation distance, receiver field of view and
source beam misalignment.
 Optical underwater communication systems can be
designed and realized according to the following
specifications:
• high data-rate, ranging from Mb/s up to Gb/s, if laser
exploitation is acceptable;
BR = BW ⋅ log 2 (1 + SNR ) (7)
and, considering OOK (On-Off-Keying) modulation format,
typical for Intensity Modulation–Direct Detection (IM-DD)
optical communication systems [42], the BER is given by

• relatively low-cost and low-power components and

circuits equipped with LEDs and photodiodes; 1 § Eb ·
BER = ⋅ erfc ¨ ¸ (8)
• collimated laser beam for high directivity field pattern 2 ¨ 2N ¸
© 0 ¹
for high data-rate optical signal transmission;
• LED beam for high angular divergence optical being erfc(x) the complementary error function and the bit
transmission; energy-to-noise density ratio Eb/N0 is defined by SNR, BR and
BW according to the expression
• reduced energy consumption for high-data rate
transmission.
Performance evaluation has been carried out starting from Eb BW
= SNR ⋅ (9).
the electrical SNR relative to the typical underwater optical link N0 BR
reported in [32]
In recent years, there have been several studies that have
2
addressed the potential capabilities of optical underwater
ª Pt e − 3 Kr D 2 cos φ º communication systems, and some notable demonstrations at
SNR = « ⋅ ⋅ » (5)
high data-rates have been presented. In Table I some important
¬ tan θ 4 r
2 2
NEP ¼
results are reported, which refer to optical underwater
communication systems operating in clear water.
where the three factors in the square brackets are referred
respectively, to the transmitter, the communication channel and Some possible network topologies have been considered in
the receiver, with Pt the transmitted power, ș the half angle [41] and the corresponding performance evaluated with the aim
transmitter beam width, K§c/3 the diffuse attenuation of implementing underwater sensor networks based on optical
coefficient, which typically ranges from ∼0.02 m-1 for the communications. As regards underwater optical networks
cleanest water, to ∼0.8 m-1 for the more turbid coastal water based on mobile node-robots in swarm configuration,
[31, 32], c being the beam attenuation coefficient, r is the performance and routing optimization have been presented in
optical link length, D the receiver aperture diameter, the [42].
angle between the receiver optical axis and the line-of-sight
between transmitter and receiver, NEP is the Noise Equivalent TABLE I. UNDERWATER OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Power, given by
Author Range Bit-rate System Ref.
100 m- Blue-Green
Farr ~10 Mb/s [33]
300 m LED
NEP = Pbg2 _ sn + Psig2 _ sn + Pdark
2 2
_ sn + Pamp _ n
(6) CORK
100 m 5 Mb/s Test in Ocean [34]
Project
Small Low
where Feng Lu 10 m 310 b/s Cost Optical [35]
Pbg_sn = solar background shot-noise, depending on solar Modem
background Pbg, photodiode responsivity S, effective noise Aqua Nodes
Vasilescu 8m 300 kb/s sensor [36]
bandwidth BWen=ʌBW/2 and photodiode excess noise factor F; network
Psig_sn = signal shot-noise, depending on received optical power Hanson & Laboratory
2m 1 Gb/s [37]
Psig, photodiode responsivity S, effective noise bandwidth Radic Laser Tunk
BWen=ʌBW/2 and photodiode excess noise factor F; Chancey 5m 10 Mb/s - [38]
Pdark_sn = depending on multiplied dark current Idark, non- Ambalux
Ambalux 40 m 10 Mb/s [39]
multiplied dark current Idc, photodiode current gain Gdet, System
photodiode responsivity S, effective noise bandwidth AquaOptical
Doniec 30 m 2 Mb/s [40]
System
BWen=ʌBW/2 and photodiode excess noise factor F;
Pamp_n = depending on preamplifier current noise density In_amp, V. HYBRID ACOUSTIC/OPTIC COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
photodiode current gain Gdet, responsivity S, and effective
noise bandwidth BWen=ʌBW/2. An approach that faces the constraints in underwater
communications of underwater robot swarms, is based on the
The bit-rate, BR, is related to the SNR and BW by the implementation of hybrid acoustic/optic communication
expression systems [33, 43].
 The two techniques can be viewed as complementary and
this hybrid approach can exploit the peculiarities of mobile
robot swarms in term of “cognitive” resources management, so
to realize the benefits of both kinds of system in hybrid
acoustic/optical underwater network.
An important advantage of the proposed hybrid system is
that the two communication “platforms” can operate jointly
(dual communication mode), singularly (acoustic or optical
communication mode) or even in a special hybrid mode, using
the peculiar features of the optic signals to ease the acoustic
protocols operation. The last one is the most easy approach and
is the first under implementation. In any case the final choice
among the modes will be the result of a dynamic process
carried out on the basis of conditions set by the swarm control
system, according to the cognitive resources management.
A. Hybrid Performance Evaluation
At this moment only an approximate quantitative
evaluation of the advantages coming from the hybrid
communication mode can be presented because the other
modes imply the electronic design of an optical driver of the
OTR head (later in this paper) that is still to be done. The basic
advantages in aloha-based protocols are:
a) the cut–off of the content times (latency), that can be
carried out using sync optical signals instead of the acoustical
tones;
b) the time saving relevant to the timeguard that could
be optimized through the use of optical sync signals.
In the first case, a quantitative evaluation of latency can be
done starting from the distance among the nodes. In a dense
swarm it should be typically around few meters (3 to 10)
according to the vessel characteristics, but with the possibility
to reach about 20 m, depending on the mission requirement:
this bring to a time-of-flight of about 15 ms. Considering that a
typical short message for a swarm stable navigation could
contain about 100 bits, that is about 8 symbols of our SWAN,
the latency plus message could ask something more than 20ms
and the use of the Hybrid mode could save about 75% of
channel time.
Further advantages could be obtained using the optical
signals as tool to optimize the duration and the positioning of
the time guards. An extended discussion of this case is quite
beyond the scopes of the paper because of the statistical
properties of multipath. In case the multipath energy is able to
cause intersymbolic interference, the receiver could feed back
to the transmitter the arrival of the interference, helping to
redefine in a dynamic way the parameters of time guard (such
as first delay, sliding time and width the Tg itself) in order to
minimize as much as possible the interference. This last
technique could be strongly effective in practical cases: in
commercial modems, in fact, the real band s by the acoustical
modems can be almost devastated by the multipath effects
going down for more than one order of magnitude. We still do
not have experimental tests of this approach because the
SWAN are still in their first phase of tests, but the potential is
very high.
A multibody system like a robot swarm, should react to
environmental modifications in a cognitive mode, both
modifying the parameters of the transmission "organs" and
modifying the physical dispersion/geometry of the system
itself. In particular, the network intelligence can take great
advantage by the fact that the slower and less efficient
acoustical channel is almost unsensitive to water opacity and to
sunlight conditions, whereas the high speed optical
communication channel will offer much greater performances
where high acoustical reflections can affect the signal
transmission (like in rivers or harbours, for instance). This
creates a multilevel connection among the different parts of its
distributed intelligence and communication is a key issue for
the swarm control, the transfer of service data among the
nodes, the transmission of useful data from the swarm
individual to the outside.
Basically, the swarm can be viewed as a wireless network
of mobile nodes that is able to adapt itself to different needs
depending on the physical arrangement of the nodes geometry.
Few examples of opposite needs can be:
• the need to transmit low/high speed data along
long/short distances;
• the need to increase the internal (to the swarm)
available band in order to allow processing like data
fusion coming from many sensors concentrated on the
same target;
• the need to maintain a disperse swarm order to
accomplish wide area monitoring tasks.
Moreover, a high data-rate optical link can be used to
transfer data from the area covered by the robot swarm to the
outside by a “collector-transponder” node.
Generally, underwater robot swarm networks can be
characterized by their “spatial coverage” and by the “density of
nodes”, dynamic parameters that have relevant implications for
the MAC- and network-layer specifications [14].
The spatial extent of a network must be compared with the
communication range among the nodes: if all nodes are in
direct contact, a “single-hop” network can be defined, while a
network covering a large area requires “multiple hops” to
connect the nodes. Within this framework, basic system
requirements to consider are:
• latency, that is a strict requirement for multi-hop
network topology using acoustic communication
channel, negligible when using optical communication.
Forwarding information hop-by-hop from source to
destination could impact on the latency. In underwater
acoustic communication, the propagation delay due to
sound propagation is very high with a severe effect on
the latency threshold;
• power consumption;
• throughput.
The MAC protocol in a multi-hop, self-organizing network
must achieve two goals. The first one is the creation of the
network infrastructure. If sensor nodes are densely scattered in
a field, the MAC scheme must establish communication links
for data transfer. This forms the basic infrastructure needed for
communication hop-by-hop and gives the sensor network self-
organizing ability. The second objective is to fairly and
efficiently share communication resources between sensor
nodes. Novel protocols and algorithms are needed to
effectively tackle the resource constraints and application
requirements of sensor networks.
Within this framework, a Knowledge Horizon [6] can be
defined in relation to:
• the Global Perception limit;
• the Cognition Delay, intended as the delay requested to
pass information and/or cognition to the target node.
B. SWAN MODEM
An acoustic modem has been designed and realized for
transmitting, receiving and processing M-FSK modulated
signals that are robust against the severe underwater
communication channel (Fig. 1).
The acoustic modem has been realized to be suited to the
selected omnidirectional electro-acoustic transducer Reson
TC4043. An 8-FSK modulation format has been adopted that
provides 128 tones, of which 8 are used for signaling and 120
for information transmission.
This choice leads to a bit-rate value Rb depending on the
number of useful tones, NT, the symbol time Ts and the guard
time Tg according to the relationship

The first constrain is due to the amount of incoming

information for each node when the number of members of the § N · (10).
swarm increases. Each sensing node generates information Rb = ¨ 3 ⋅ T ¸ /(Ts + Tg ) bit/s
© 8 ¹
and, in principle, each information should be distributed to
every other node (at least for the positional and
In the considered context, the guard time Tg is a critical
synchronization information), but because the maximum
parameter since it is constrained by the transducer duty-cycle
available bandwidth for each node is fixed, this limits the
and to the multipath effects in such a way that the effective bit-
information that is possible to obtain in a finite time.
rate can vary from few kbit/s to some tens of kbit/s. The
The second case is related to the transmission delays and modem is thus provided of a certain “intelligence” to
latency times, that are relevant in the case of acoustic signal dynamically select the guard time from environmental and
transmission. Also in this case the Horizon is defined by the network configuration information.
fact that the delays and latencies increase when the node
number increases, thus generating a physical limit to the
information that can be managed to react to external
events/stimuli. Even if a Network Distance concept can be
introduced, it should be not a metrical definition, but a
combination of transmission delays and latency times on the
nodes. To mitigate these constraints by the communication
point of view is the use, when possible, of an optical channel,
by which a great amount of information can be transmitted
with negligible delay within a Physical Horizon which, in this
case, is represented by the operating range of the optical
communication (10-100 m).
Therefore, main steps for the realization of underwater
networks of mobile node-robots in swarm configuration are:

• design and realization of an acoustic communication

system suited to low bandwidth underwater acoustical
transmission, operating on relatively long distances
(SWAN-SAR);
• design and realization of an optical communication
system suited to high bandwidth underwater
transmission;
• integration of the two communication systems and
realisation of advanced algorithms that allow the
communication on a multi-hopped mobile sensor
network based on acoustical/optical transmission
systems;
• realisation of an adaptive intelligent (cognitive) system,
which manages single-mode or double-mode
communications, according to the requirements set by
the rules for robot swarm control and management.
Fig. 1. Two blocks (transmitter and receiver) representing the acoustic
modem
The transmission system for M-FSK modulated signals
uses pre-allocated digital sampled waveform signals stored in
EEPROM Memory, which is used as a Look-Up-Table,
containing all the sampled M-FSK waveforms. In this manner,
based on the binary sequences to be transmitted, the
microcontroller selects a specific sampled waveform that is
stored in the EEPROM loaded in FPGA board. The FPGA
board provides the binary signal to be transmitted by adding
the guard times and sends the sequence to a DAC converter
subsystem that generates the output analog signal, which is PIN diodes, realizing almost a 4ʌ radiation pattern. The optical
then power amplified and feeds the acoustical transducer. technology has been fully characterized at ENEA’s Labs and
additional tests have been carried out to check the transmission
The second section of Fig. 1 shows the receiver block properties.
diagram. It is composed by front-end section and the digital
signal processor. The transducer converts the acoustical signal
and provides an electrical signal that is processed after
amplification. This section is composed by pre-amplifier, filter
and post-amplifier that operate to reduce signal distortions
effects; after that, the ADC subsystem converts the signal in
the digital sequence.
The digital receiver performs a spectral analysis of the M-
FSK signal for symbol decision.
This operation requires a 256 Byte Buffer Memory that
stores the bits in a vector that will be processed by DSP in the
frequency domain. After frequency conversion, the receiver
selects the symbol in according to decision regions and
provides the bits associated.
In Fig.2 are shown analog (Fig. 2.a) and digital (Fig 2.b)
circuit board that have been developed.
Fig. 3. A picture of the “Venus” vessel and the OTR device.

In Fig. 4 we have reported in a log scale the measured

absorption of the blue and solar spectrum (black line) LEDs
used in the transducer using a 50 pool facility available to the
Frascati Labs of ENEA with a medium transparency.

Fig. 4. Measured absorbtion values of blue (blue line) and solar spectrum
(black line) LEDs depending on distance [m].

Fig. 2. A picture of the acoustic modem: a) analog and b) digital circuit
board.
C. Optical Transducer
Currently the team is carrying out the realization of the
optical transducer.
The new Optical Transmitter Receiver (OTR) device
(Fig.3) will be managed by a next version of the SWAN-SAR
to produce an integrated hybrid intelligent device. The device
hosts three diode triplets with different wavelength (red, solar
spectrum and blu) to exploit at best the propagation at different
distances (allowing also an ultrafast distance measurement
using the differential attenuation) and three high sensitivity
It is evident the different behavior of the two sources,
caused by the wavelenght absorption and by the interaction of
the dispersed powders. In the plot the relative intensity has
been equalized at the length of about 4 meters to allow an
easier comparison. Taking into account the upper power limit,
which we reached at the workbench (about the double of the
tests in the pool), the maximum distance allowing an effective
data transmission is evaluated about 25 meters in clear waters.
As far as concerns the operation frequency, according to
the tests carried out, the device response is still flat within 1dB
to 1MHz. Using the On-Off Keying modulation the transient
slew rate reached the maximum value of more than 150A/μs
with a corresponding transient of light intensity with a peak
current of about 36A. This could allow, in principle, to
generate pulses as short as 0.5 μs in duration. Currently, we are
working up to a timing of 1 μs for a more stable behavior.
These very high power level are caused by the simultaneous
operation of nine LED sources along the three sides of the
OTR for very short times.
CONCLUSIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
According to the simulation carried out up to now and to
the analytical work that brought us to the design of SWAN and
to the realization of OTR, we think that a new generation, high
performance, underwater networking technology can be
achieved and that these results will open new possibilities in
the research of underwater intelligent swarms.
Next objectives will be the measurement of the
performance of a prototypal hybrid network realized with the
SWAN technology. The experiments should be realized near
Rome, in the Bracciano lake or in Nemi’s Lake (thanks to the
cooperation with INSEAN CNR Institute). In parallel, our
group is engaged in carrying out theoretical developments on
special, high priority protocols for emergency situations [5, 6]
based on advanced graphs algorithms [45] and on 3D unstable
wireless clustered networks (UCN) using a simulation system
for underwater networked swarms that we have set up in
previous projects like Harness, funded by the Italian Institute of
Technology.
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