Innovation Pipeline

Sensor networks are now commonly used for jobs like monitoring and managing heat and light in buildings. Now they’re being deployed underwater, to gain insights about environmental conditions beneath the oceans.
But lots of problems make underwater sensor networks difficult. Wireless signal propagation, short bandwidth, limited battery life and also a highly corrosive environment where fouling of electronics is a way of life.
Research scientists at the University of California at San Diego have made strides in building low-cost sensor networks that operate in the ocean. These networks will provide scientists with a cost-effective tool to enable applications for oceanographic data collection, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, assisted navigation and tactical surveillance applications.

The researchers from the Jacobs School of Engineering presented a paper recently at the IEEE Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop in Rome. It highlighted the energy-conservation benefits of using reconfigurable hardware to run underwater sensor networks.
The real advancement of the UCSD group involves reconfigurable hardware and improvement of energy efficiency so battery-powered sensor networks can live longer and collect more data.
With an array of underwater sensors tethered together in a network, researchers say, data can be collected and sent back to land without any one sensor consuming a great deal of energy to send the signal. These underwater sensors can also be used for monitoring fresh water quality, providing details on toxic chemicals, acidity and biological characteristics of water.
Underwater networking is a relatively new and unexplored area. There’s been some progress since World War II, when underwater telephones were developed in the United States to communicate with submarines. Now, new networks of sensors may help scientists monitor pollution, temperatures and other environmental pulses in the sea, which could provide valuable insight into climate change, as well as other issues. By Lee Bruno