Ultra-low power transmitters for underwater acoustic sensing

There is an increased interest towards the monitoring of underwater activity for environmental, scientific, andcommercial applications. For example, the behaviour of an ecosystem can be monitored using short rangeacoustic sensors deployed underwater. To extract useful information, it is also desirable to deploy non-intrusivetransmitters in the environment.This projects aims at developing low-complexity transmission schemes for short-range sensing applications.The transmission techniques proposed are intended to be deployed on small form factor devices and areconstrained on power consumption. The performance of the transmission scheme will be evaluated usingdigital signal processing techniques.To evaluate the sensor reliability, the effect of underwater propagation conditions will be considered.Specifically, reflections from obstructions in the ecosystem and surface of the water will introduce echos at thereceiver which will contribute to the signal distortion. Moreover, mobility and currents will cause a Dopplershift. The reliable detection at the receiver will be demonstrated while accounting for these effects.