- to define methodologies, technologies and procedures for the implementation of underwater acoustic communication networks to be integrated as a component of a multi-media network for surveillance and monitoring of critical at sea infrastructures.
- to determine the performance characteristics (bandwidth, achievable bitrate, resilience/delay time, maximum range, etc.) of digital transmission over acoustic underwater channels as a function of transmission frequency, signal modulation, environmental characteristics (including sound speed as a function of space and time, bathymetry, reverberation level, ambient noise, etc., and channel geometry source/receivers depth and range).
- to implement a generic underwater ad-hoc mobile acoustic network (MANET) composed by fixed and mobile nodes. In particular, the mobile nodes will have the role of adapting their position in order to optimize the network performance as a function of the space-varying and timevarying environmental characteristics of the channel. In order to achieve a similar performance optimization, fixed nodes will need to implement adaptive signal equalization algorithms for compensating the transmission medium variability. The implemented ad-hoc network must be reconfigurable and scalable, in order to allow easy replacement/substitution of nodes that may fail during operation, and the insertion of additional nodes. Moreover, the implemented algorithms, in particular those for channel adaptation, must be locally resident in the nodes (distributed algorithms) and not rely on centralized information.
- the specification of requirements, methodologies and specific algorithms for integration of a MANET into the overall security system of the critical infrastructure. While this is not in itself a research issue, it is mandatory to obtain easy, system independent integration among the ad-hoc underwater network and the land/aerial network(s). This imposes additional constraints and requirements on the underwater network and must be dealt with at design level.
- to continuously integrate and adapt the developed methodologies to the requirements set forth by the end users in order to make sure that the final product clearly responds to the operability and field test robustness, autonomy and performance.
- experimental verification with several engineering tests at sea for system tuning and a final global test in realistic conditions of the performance of a prototype system assembled according to the methodologies and algorithms determined in the project.
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