Smart Modems - Underwater Capabilities Beyond Communications

Underwater acoustic communications (acomms) technology and capability have reached somewhat of an equivalence with the mobile cell phones of a decade ago. Commercial modems are available from more than a few vendors, but they mainly provide purely an acomms function. At the academic level technology development focuses on increased throughput (or data rate), and/or on the development of undersea networks. While we at Teledyne Benthos actively pursue both of these enhancements, our emphasis is to design for many auxiliary capabilities that, while not explicitly communications functions, rely on the communications capabilities and computing infrastructure of the modem. We are pursuing the "smart" phone approach wherein communications is but one capability of the device. The internal structure of the Telesonar modem is based on a file-sharing system which supports all aspects of the modem: acoustic and/or sensor (digital) data storage, stored wavefiles (for experimental transmissions), and algorithm implementations. We use the modem tp provide an extensive toolbox of capabilities for underwater localization, navigation, and tracking, while at all times maintaining a full range of communications capabilities. The toolbox includes precision ranging, bearing estimation via wideband USBL, wideband LBL, and "Smart Markers.' The modems support an SD-card data storage system for real-time streaming of acoustic time series or sensor-provided serial data. We currently offer up to 64 Gbyte of storage. Our form of storage is known to any remote modem such that any file or files can be uploaded and acoustically transmitted. The remote modem may also query any aspect of the stored data - the amount of storage used, the number of files stored, etc., without impact of any kind on the "modem" operations.