Underwater Acoustic Multi-User Network

As subsea industries such as oil and gas exploration ventures into deeper water, the operators require faster, more
reliable and cost effective technologies. This proposed Development project, a continuation from the Research project
funded by EEDA, aims to carry out research, development and extensive underwater field trials to shape the benchtop
prototype into a pre-production underwater high speed wireless communication prototype system. The proposed
system aims to: i) Reduce uplink acoustic data retrieval time by at least 66%. ii) Lower end-users’ capital investment
expenditure by up to 80% through the potential reuse of existing subsea hardware devices for new technology. iii) Low
power robust and reliable acoustic communication which uses 500-800 times less energy, thereby extending subsea
sensors’ battery operational time. An environmental benefit is the noise reduction to the underwater natural habitat.
Sonar Link’s proposed solutions concomitantly lead to carbon footprint reduction.
• Sonar Link will design a pre-production underwater high speed acoustic network system prototype, Annex A Fig. 1,
which creates an entirely novel set of exploration equipment, with features not available in the market:
a. Base-station, Annex A Fig. 2: (a) simultaneous multiple sensors uplink reception offering at least 66% operational
cost and time reduction for end-users; (b) High speed acoustic communication up to 138x faster (c) Subsea
positioning up to 32x more accurate than competitors.
b. Subsea sensors, Annex A Fig. 3: adopting novel low complexity embedded signal processing algorithms where
end-users can potentially reuse their existing subsea sensors for new technology.
c. Resin-free solid state device transducer: reduces manufacturing and environmental pollution up to 74%.
The base-station, down to 100m below sea surface, communicates acoustically to and from a plurality of subsea
sensors, down to 12,000m below sea-surface, via advance acoustic signals, 500-800 times lower in energy than other
technologies, enables a series of extensive offshore trials to be carried out.