Underwater Acoustic Communication Inspired by Dolphins

Innovation: Industry

EvoLogics

Image: The Miscellanista / Unsplash / CC BY SA - Creative Commons Attribution + ShareAlike

Navigate Through Liquid

Living systems that move in liquids must navigate around physical obstacles and find their way from place to place to locate resources or suitable climates. Many liquids are denser than air, which means it’s a thicker medium through which signals must pass. On the other hand, liquids tend to conduct some signals better than air or solids. Liquid dwellers must use strategies that enable them to detect and follow signals in this dense medium. For example, electricity transmits well in water and several organisms, such as Amazon electric eels, have organs that detect and use electric signals to navigate.

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Sense Sound and Other Vibrations From the Environment

For living systems, sensing sound and other vibrations is important for communicating and detecting conditions within their environment. Living systems must locate a signal’s source so that they can move toward it (such as when it is food or a potential mate) or away from it (such as when it is a predator). To prompt an appropriate response, living systems must sense these signals, recognize their amplitude or volume (which is sometimes very low), and determine their direction. Living systems must be attuned to signals relevant to them and able to distinguish these from irrelevant sounds to avoid expending unnecessary energy. For example, owls’ ears are asymmetrically placed. This enables them to detect sounds more accurately, which helps them locate small prey at night and avoid wasting energy chasing down irrelevant sounds.

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Send Sound Signals

Many living systems send auditory signals to communicate with others, including to attract, announce, or warn. These sounds must be audible to the intended recipient in a variety of conditions, such as in wind, water, and solids. As a result, each living system has specific sounds best adapted to its environment. For example, some birds live in loud habitats, like those alongside noisy streams or in windy areas. These birds use sound frequencies that can be heard by other birds over competing environmental noises.

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Patents

WO2000011817A2
3.2 MB PDF

S2C technology from EvoLogics helps to detect tsunamis earlier by maximizing transmission of underwater signals in turbulent water conditions.

Benefits

Reliable underwater communication
Reliable signal transmission

Applications

Earthquake and tsunami detection
Maritime communications

UN Sustainable Development Goals Addressed

Goal 15: Life on Land

The Challenge

Reliable wireless communication is crucial for maritime and offshore applications, where malfunctions and delays could put the whole operation at risk. All systems must be able to perform in the most challenging weather and sea conditions. Transmitting data underwater is challenging due to the motion, noise, limited bandwidth, and variable delays. Even in calm seas, poor transmission quality and below-average transmission speeds can result in the transmission getting altered or lost. Earthquakes and the tsunamis they can generate can cause deaths, long-term suffering by survivors, widespread devastation, and environmental damage in areas even far from the quake epicenter. An early detection system can prepare residents to evacuate even sooner, and perhaps take precautions to reduce damage to infrastructure.

Innovation Details

S2C (Sweep-Spread Carrier) technology continuously spreads underwater signals over a wide range of frequencies and adapts the signal structure so that the signals do not interfere with each other. This enables successful decoding of signals in harsh environments even when they are heavily masked by noise. These sensors can be used to detect underwater earthquakes and therefore aid in tsunami warning systems.

S2C modems. Photo: EvoLogics

Biological Model

Dolphins chirp and sing across a broad frequency bandwidth. This continuous change of frequencies not only serves to transmit information, but also to compensate for sources of interference that can occur underwater, such as echoes and noise.

See Related Strategy

a silver and gray dolphin jumps through the surface of a wave from above

Biological Strategy

Whistles Compensate for Underwater Sound Distortion

Dolphins

Dolphins send out broadband whistles and bursts of clicks to prevent messages from being distorted underwater.

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