DEUS: Distributed, Efficient, Ubiquitous and Secure Data Delivery Using Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Ocean Big Data (OBD) is an emerging area of research that benefits ocean environmental monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, and military surveillance. It is now affordable for oil and gas companies, fishing industry, militaries, and marine researchers to deploy physical undersea sensor systems to obtain strategic advantages. However, these sensing activities are scattered, isolated, and often follow the traditional “deploy, wait, retrieve, and post-process” routine. Since transmitting information underwater remains difficult and unreliable, these sensors lack a cyber-interconnection, which severely limits ocean cyber-physical systems. This project aims to providing a viable cyber interconnection scheme that enables distributed, efficient, ubiquitous, and secure (DEUS) data delivery from underwater sensors to the surface station. As for research efforts in Year 1, we mainly focus on (1) designs and analysis of ferrite assisted magnetic induction communication; (2) ferrite assisted MI communication testbed setup; and (3) marine data collection using autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with 3D MI coils. Six papers have been accepted or published as a result of this project in the first year.