Development of an acoustic-based underwater image transmission system

Abstract

Wireless communication systems are inevitable for efficient underwater activities. Because of the poor propagation characteristics of light and electromagnetic waves, acoustic waves are generally used for the underwater wireless communication. Although there are many kinds of information type, visual images take an essential role especially for search and identification activities. For this reason, we developed an acoustic-based underwater image transmission system under a dual use technology project supported by MOCIE (Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy). For the application to complicated and time-varying underwater environments all-digital transmitter and receiver systems are investigated. Array acoustic transducers are used at the receiver, which have the center frequency of 32kHz and the bandwidth of 4kHz. To improve transmission speed and quality, various algorithms and systems are used. The system design techniques will be discussed in detail including image compression/decompression system, adaptive beam- forming, fast RLS adaptive equalizer, /4 QPSK (Quadrilateral Phase Shift Keying) modulator/demodulator, and convolution coding/Viterbi. Decoding.