Underwater data infrastructures offer natural cooling and enhanced physical security compared to terrestrial facilities, but their storage systems remain susceptible to acoustic injection attacks, where sound-induced mechanical vibrations disrupt critical I/O operations and compromise data availability. This work presents a surveillance framework for localizing and tracking such close-range adversarial acoustic sources targeting offshore infrastructures, particularly underwater data centers (UDCs). We propose a scalable heterogeneous receiver configuration with one facility-mounted hydrophone and one mobile hydrophone carried by a surveillance robot. The resulting problem differs from conventional sound source localization (SSL) due to distributed facility scale, narrowband signaling with phase ambiguity, non-cooperative sources, and mobile receiver state uncertainty. To address these challenges, we formulate a Locus-Conditioned Maximum A-Posteriori (LC-MAP) scheme that generates acoustically informed priors, ensuring a physically plausible initial state for a joint time- and frequency-difference-of-arrival (TDOA-FDOA) filtering. We integrate this into an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) pipeline, along with a multipath-aware measurement model that compensates for surface and bed reflections, and an effective measurement covariance that accounts for mobile receiver uncertainty. Extensive Monte Carlo analyses, fixed-array baseline comparisons, Gazebo-based physics simulations, and field trials demonstrate reliable real-time localization and tracking. The framework achieves sub-meter localization accuracy and over 90% success rates in most scenarios, with convergence times nearly halved compared to baselines. Overall, this study establishes a geometry-aware, real-time approach for acoustic threat localization and advances autonomous surveillance capabilities of underwater infrastructure.
With the recent increase in the number of underwater activities, having effective underwater communication systems has become increasingly important. Underwater acoustic communication has been widely used but greatly impaired due to the complicated nature of the underwater environment. In a bid to better understand the underwater acoustic channel so as to help in the design and improvement of underwater communication systems, attempts have been made to model the underwater acoustic channel using mathematical equations and approximations under some assumptions. In this paper, we explore the cap…
In this work, we focus on the model-mismatch problem for model-based subspace channel tracking in the correlated underwater acoustic channel. A model based on the underwater acoustic channel's correlation can be used as the state-space model in the Kalman filter to improve the underwater acoustic channel tracking compared that without a model. Even though the data support the assumption that the model is slow-varying and uncorrelated to some degree, to improve the tracking performance further, we can not ignore the model-mismatch problem because most channel models encounter this problem in th…
The primary contribution of this paper is to characterize the propagation of acoustic signal carrying information through any medium and the interaction of the travelling acoustic signal with the surrounding medium. We will use the concept of damped harmonic oscillator to model the medium and Milne's oscillator technique to map the interaction of the acoustic signal with the medium. The acoustic signal itself will be modelled using the one-way wave equation formulated in terms of acoustic pressure and velocity of acoustic waves through the medium. Using the above-mentioned concepts, we calcula…
Achieving high throughput and reliability in underwater acoustic networks for transmitting distributed and large volume of data is a challenging task due to the bandwidth-limited and unpredictable nature of the acoustic channel. In a multi-node network, such as in the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT), communication link efficiency varies dynamically: if the channel is not in good condition, e.g., when in deep fade, channel coding techniques may fail to deliver the information even with multiple retransmissions. Hence, an efficient and agile collaborative strategy is required to allocate ap…
Research in underwater communication is rapidly becoming attractive due to its various modern applications. An efficient mechanism to secure such communication is via physical layer security. In this paper, we propose a novel physical layer authentication (PLA) mechanism in underwater acoustic communication networks where we exploit the position/location of the transmitter nodes to achieve authentication. We perform transmitter position estimation from the received signals at reference nodes deployed at fixed positions in a predefined underwater region. We use time of arrival (ToA) estimation …
Impulsive noise is a major impediment to orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based underwater acoustic (UWA) communications. In this work, we evaluate the performance of a memoryless analog nonlinear preprocessor (MANP) that is used to mitigate outliers. The proposed MANP exhibits intermittent nonlinearity only in the presence of the impulsive noise and suppresses the power of outliers based on their amplitudes. Since the outliers are distinguishable in the analog domain prior to anti-aliasing filtering, the MANP outperforms its digital counterparts in all scenarios. Experimental…
We propose an orthogonal chirp waveform design for underwater acoustic (UW-A) communications and analyze the cross-correlation characteristics of orthogonal chirp waveforms in coherent and non-coherent detections. We consider information symbols are carried over proposed M-ary orthogonal chirp waveforms for UW-A transmissions. Moreover, we develop a coherent and an optimal non-coherent receivers based on proposed chirp waveforms. Explicit derivations include closed-form expressions for cross-correlation coefficients, and theoretical bit-error-rate (BER) of coherent and non-coherent receivers. …
Deep Learning Based Multi-Step Channel Prediction for Adaptive Underwater Acoustic OFDM Systems
IRIS Research Group, ADAPT Center, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin（都柏林三一学院计算机科学与统计学院）；College of Oceanography, Hohai University（河海大学海洋学院）；Navigation College, Jimei University（集美大学航海学院）
Underwater acoustic (UWA) communications have been widely used but greatly impaired due to the complicated nature of the underwater environment. In order to improve UWA communications, modeling and understanding the UWA channel is indispensable. However, there exist many challenges due to the high uncertainties of the underwater environment and the lack of real-world measurement data. In this work, the capability of reservoir computing and deep learning has been explored for modeling the UWA communication channel accurately using real underwater data collected from a water tank with disturbanc…
Underwater acoustic (UWA) communication plays a key role in the process of exploring and studying the ocean. In this paper, a modified non-stationary wideband channel model for UWA communication in shallow water scenarios is proposed. In this geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM), multiple motion effects, time-varying angles, distances, clusters' locations with the channel geometry, and the ultra-wideband property are considered, which makes the proposed model more realistic and capable of supporting long time/distance simulations. Some key statistical properties are investigated, including t…
Accurate channel estimation is critical to the performance of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) underwater acoustic (UWA) communications, especially under multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scenarios. In this paper, we explore Vector Approximate Message Passing (VAMP) coupled with Expected Maximum (EM) to obtain channel estimation (CE) for MIMO OFDM UWA communications. The EM-VAMP-CE scheme is developed by employing a Bernoulli-Gaussian (BG) prior distribution for the channel impulse response, and hyperparameters of the BG prior distribution are learned via the EM algorithm.…
The use of vector sensors as receivers for Underwater Acoustic Communications systems is gaining popularity. It has become important to obtain performance measures for such communication systems to quantify their efficacy. The fundamental advantage of using a vector sensor as a receiver is that a single sensor is able to provide diversity gains offered by MIMO systems. In a recent work novel framework for evaluating capacity of underwater channel was proposed. The approach is based on modeling the channel as a set of paths along which the signal arrives at the receiver with different Angles of…
Acoustic communication is currently considered as the best way to transmit information over long distances under water, since acoustic waves have lower attenuation in water than the other information transmission media. However, current information transmission rates of the underwater acoustic communication is usually limited by low-frequency bandwidth due to the large attenuation which characterized in high-frequency sound waves in water. Spiral acoustic beams with helical wavefront dislocations carrying orbital angular momentum have been applied to acoustic levitation and capture. Recently, …
Chirp signals have been exploited extensively in radar and underwater acoustic (UW-A) communication systems for their robustness to multipath and superior correlation properties. We present a multiuser multicarrier chirp-division multiplexing (MU-MCDM) system which orthogonal chirp spread spectrum are utilized in frequency subcarriers for multiuser applications. Furthermore, orthogonal chirp transform (OCT) and discrete orthogonal chirp transform (DOCT) are developed for continuous and discrete implementations of MCDM systems. In addition, we design a maximum likelihood (ML) receiver capable o…
This paper provides an overview of how and why acoustic waves are important for underwater communication when compared with radio and optical waves, underwater acoustic channel, it's characteristics and model. Also about the underwater sensor architecture, challenges faced by sensor nodes in the network and Media Acess Control(MAC) protocol solutions for them. This paper also describes about the various communication approaches including channel coding in underwater and their performance analysis for different approaches used. Through these approaches, multiple underwater vehicles can communic…
Underwater acoustic localization has traditionally been challenging due to the presence of unknown environmental structure and dynamic conditions. The problem is richer still when such structure includes occlusion, which causes the loss of line-of-sight (LOS) between the acoustic source and the receivers, on which many of the existing localization algorithms rely. We develop a semi-blind passive localization method capable of accurately estimating the source's position even in the possible absence of LOS between the source and all receivers. Based on typically-available prior knowledge of the …
In this article we research about underwater acoustics transceivers. As Underwater acoustic transceivers consume more power than Radio frequency transceivers. The techniques which are being utilized in radio frequency cannot be implemented directly in underwater acoustic system it needs to be re investigated to design new methods. To achieve reliable acoustic data transmission new techniques should be achieved or the traditional Orthogonal frequency divisional multiplexing techniques should be revised. The power consumption also relies upon underwater acoustic signal propagation and transmissi…
Localization of underwater networks is important in many military and civil applications. Because GPS receivers do not work below the water surface, traditional localization methods form a relative topology of underwater nodes (UWNs) and utilize either anchor nodes or floating gateways with dual transceivers in order to determine global coordinates. However, these methods introduce logistical complications and security risks in deploying the anchor and/or surface gateways. This paper tackles such an issue by proposing new localization techniques which can remotely localize UWNs using optoacous…
Full-duplex (FD) communication is a promising candidate to address the data rate limitations in underwater acoustic (UWA) channels. Because of transmission at the same time and on the same frequency band, the signal from the local transmitter creates self-interference (SI) that contaminates the signal from the remote transmitter. At the local receiver, channel state information for both the SI and remote channels is required to remove the SI and equalize the SI-free signal, respectively. However, because of the rapid time-variations of the UWA environment, real-time tracking of the channels is…
The explosions on September 26th, 2022, which damaged the gas pipelines of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, have highlighted the need and urgency of improving the resilience of Underwater Critical Infrastructures (UCIs). Comprising gas pipelines and power and communication cables, these connect countries worldwide and are critical for the global economy and stability. An attack targeting multiple of such infrastructures simultaneously could potentially cause significant damage and greatly affect various aspects of daily life. Due to the increasing number and continuous deployment of UCIs, exis…
In these last years, many studies have focalized on the design of reliable underwater acoustic communication systems. However, the ocean acoustic communication channel exhibits strong amplitude and phase fluctuations and the phenomena of diffraction, refraction and reflection. Due to the complexity of the environment, the motions of transducers, sea surface, etc., the underwater acoustic signals exhibit random temporal and spatial frequency fluctuations in both amplitude and phase. Therefore, it is very important to model a so complex channel. Acoustic propagation is characterized by three maj…
Future smart ocean applications require long distance and reliable communications to connect underwater sensors/robots with remote surface base stations. It is challenging to achieve such goal due to the harsh and dynamic underwater acoustic channel. While Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) technique can enhance reliability and transmission range, it is difficult to place multiple acoustic transducers on one single underwater device due to the large wavelength. Although the cooperative MIMO technique that let multiple underwater devices form a virtual MIMO system could solve the issue, …
We consider the underwater acoustic channel which is time-variant and doubly-spread in this work. Since conventional channel estimation and decision feedback equalizer (DFE) can not work well for this type of channel, a path-specific underwater acoustic channel tracking is proposed. It is based on the framework of Kalman filter. We provide a simplified sound propagation model as the state transition model. A multipath tracker is proposed which is tolerant of the model-mismatch. Then we can obtain the time-variant path number and path-specific parameters such as delay and Doppler scaling factor…
Underwater vehicles are utilized in various applications including underwater data-collection missions. The tethered connection constrains the mission both in distance traveled and number of vehicles that can run in the same area, while the addition of acoustic communications onto the vehicles grants them several functionalities. However, due to the low bandwidth of the underwater acoustic channel-which leads to low data rates-and the time overhead imposed by both the channel propagation delay and the processing delay by the acoustic modems, efficient protocols are required. In this paper, an …
With the growing use of underwater acoustic communications (UWAC) for both industrial and military operations, there is a need to ensure communication security. A particular challenge is represented by underwater acoustic networks (UWANs), which are often left unattended over long periods of time. Currently, due to physical and performance limitations, UWAC packets rarely include encryption, leaving the UWAN exposed to external attacks faking legitimate messages. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for message authentication in a UWAN setting. We begin by observing that, due to the stron…
Time reversal of waves has been successfully used in communications, sensing and imaging for decades. The application in underwater acoustic communications is of our special interest, as it puts together a reversible process (allowing a reversible software or hardware realisation) and a reversible medium (allowing a reversible model of the environment). This work in progress report addresses the issues of modelling, analysis and implementation of acoustic time reversal from the reversible computation perspective. We show the potential of using reversible cellular automata for modelling and qua…
Internet of underwater things (IoUT) is a technological revolution that could mark a new era for scientific, industrial, and military underwater applications. To mitigate the hostile underwater channel characteristics, this paper hybridizes underwater acoustic and optical wireless communications to achieve a ubiquitous control and high-speed low-latency networking performance, respectively. Since underwater optical wireless communications (UOWC) suffers from limited range, it requires effective multi-hop routing solutions. In this regard, we propose a Sector-based Opportunistic Routing (SectOR…
To satisfy the high data rate requirement andreliable transmission demands in underwater scenarios, it isdesirable to construct an efficient hybrid underwater opticalacoustic network (UWOAN) architecture by considering the keyfeatures and critical needs of underwater terminals. In UWOANs,optical uplinks and acoustic downlinks are configured betweenunderwater nodes (UWNs) and the base station (BS), wherethe optical beam transmits the high data rate traffic to theBS, while the acoustic waves carry the control information torealize the network management. In this paper, we focus onsolving the net…
In many applications, Image de-noising and improvement represent essential processes in presence of colored noise such that in underwater. Power spectral density of the noise is changeable within a definite frequency range, and autocorrelation noise function is does not like delta function. So, noise in underwater is characterized as colored noise. In this paper, a novel image de-noising method is proposed using multi-level noise power estimation in discrete wavelet transform with different basis functions. Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and mean squared error represented performance measur…
From Signals to Evidence: Interpretable Underwater Acoustic Target Sensing with Large Language Models - Part I: Framework and Recognition
School of Artificial Intelligence, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学人工智能学院）；School of Ocean Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学海洋工程与技术学院）；School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学海洋科学与技术学院）；School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学电子与光学工程学院）
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Communications（通信抗干扰技术国家级重点实验室）；University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）
The underwater acoustic signals separation is a key technique for the underwater communications. The existing methods are mostly model-based, and could not accurately characterise the practical underwater acoustic communication environment. They are only suitable for binary signal separation, but cannot handle multivariate signal separation. On the other hand, the recurrent neural network (RNN) shows powerful capability in extracting the features of the temporal sequences. Inspired by this, in this paper, we present a data-driven approach for underwater acoustic signals separation using deep l…
Since its inception, underwater digital acoustic communication has required custom hardware that neither has the economies of scale nor is pervasive. We present the first acoustic system that brings underwater messaging capabilities to existing mobile devices like smartphones and smart watches. Our software-only solution leverages audio sensors, i.e., microphones and speakers, ubiquitous in today's devices to enable acoustic underwater communication between mobile devices. To achieve this, we design a communication system that in real-time adapts to differences in frequency responses across mo…
Direct localization (DLOC) methods, which use the observed data to localize a source at an unknown position in a one-step procedure, generally outperform their indirect two-step counterparts (e.g., using time-difference of arrivals). However, underwater acoustic DLOC methods require prior knowledge of the environment, and are computationally costly, hence slow. We propose, what is to the best of our knowledge, the first data-driven DLOC method. Inspired by classical and contemporary optimal model-based DLOC solutions, and leveraging the capabilities of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we …
Vel Tech University（Vel Tech大学）；Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur（印度理工学院卡拉格普尔分校）
In underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASN), energy-reliable data transmission is a challenging task. This is due to acoustic transmission disturbances caused by excessive noise, exceptionally long propagation delays, a high bit error rate, limited bandwidth capability, and interference. One of the most important issues of UWASN for research is how to extend the life span of data transmission. Data transfer from a source node to a destination node in UWASN is a complicated topic for researchers. Many routing algorithms, such as vector base forwarding and depth base routing, have been develo…
This paper investigates the impacts of Inter-Channel Interference (ICI) effects on a shallow underwater acoustic (UWA) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system. Considering both the turbulence of the water surface and the roughness of the bottom, a stochastic geometry-based channel model utilized for a wide-band transmission scenario has been exploited to derive a simulation model. Since the system bandwidth and the sub-carrier spacing is very limited in the range of a few kHz, the channel capacity of a UWA system is severely suffered by the ICI effect. For furthe…
ONCship: A Large-Scale Underwater Acoustic Corpus for Ship Recognition
School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University（西北工业大学海洋科学与技术学院）；Research and Development Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shenzhen（西北工业大学深圳研究院）
