UQCom: Underwater Safety Communication Based on 3D Blue-green QR Arrays

Underwater team members use gestures to exchange information with each other while working, but the way of using gestures to transform information is limited, fixed and prone to lead to ambiguity. If the transformed information is inaccurate or even wrong, it will definitely interfere with collaboration between underwater team members. In our poster, we present the design, implementation and evaluation of UQCom, a novel underwater secure communication method using 3D blue-green QR arrays based on image enhancement technology, to solve the problem mentioned above. We apply blue-green QR codes to underwater short range communication and utilize underwater image enhancement technology to address the unique issues in underwater environments such as turbid water and image distortion. A 3D QR displaying scheme is proposed to improve communication rate. UQCom can also ensure communication security via encryption algorithm. Extensive experiments with two commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) smartphones conducted in indoors and outdoors demonstrate that UQCom can achieve real-time and robust short range communication in underwater environments.