Design of a New Stress Wave Communication Method for Underwater Communication

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) Vol. 68; no. 8; pp. 7370 - 7379
• Main Authors: He, Sihong, Wang, Ning, Ho, Michael, Zhu, Junxiao, Song, Gangbing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Binary phase shift keying; Binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation; Bit error rate; bit error rate (BER); Carrier frequencies; Communication; Communications systems; Data communication; Data transmission; Metals; piezoelectric transducers; Pipelines; Seawater; Selectivity; single input-single output (SISO); Steel pipes; Stress; Stress propagation; stress wave communication (SWC); Stress waves; Underwater communication; Wave propagation
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2020.3003634

Underwater communication is crucial for subsea engineering. Currently, although a variety of available technologies are available for underwater communication, almost all of them are highly dependent on the conditions of the subsea environment. Hence, underwater communication is still a challenging issue. This article develops a new stress wave communication method that can be implemented along steel pipes for underwater data transmission. In this article, we analyze stress wave propagation along pipelines, and the corresponding channel response shows the features of dispersion and frequency selectivity. Thus, a suitable carrier frequency is then selected and binary phase-shift keying is applied to encode information into the carrier stress wave. The proposed single-input-single-output communication system is implemented on a steel pipe and experiments are conducted both when in air and seawater. Results demonstrate the validity and stability of the proposed method. The communication data rate of the method can reach 1000 b/s with a low bit error rate. The proposed method shows great promise for enabling underwater communication with lower loss and longer range than conventional underwater communication methods.