The Internet of Underwater Things: From Nemo to underwater Whatsapp

Abstract

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is a novel paradigm for the Blue Economy sector bringing the ability to sense, actuate, exchange information, through low cost technologies, typical of the terrestrial IoT and personal devices, to marine and ocean environments. It requires novel underwater networking concepts that are at the core of the described developed system. While IoUT has already been proposed by the authors for sake of environmental monitoring and marine exploration, in this demo we focus on how IoUT can bring novel opportunities in the field of underwater sport, leisure and tourism. In particular, the demo demonstrates FunDive, a novel wearable system for divers, developed in EC EASME ARCHEOSUb, that supports real-time monitoring of the divers positions and health conditions, at the same time allowing unprecedented enhanced visits of the sites. The system is composed of the following elements: a miniaturized underwater sensor node and an underwater tablet. The miniaturized underwater sensor node hosts an acoustics modem, the underwater networking and information compression logic, as well as a battery pack. The tablet is connected to the node and runs a dedicated APP. The system allows divers to communicate underwater, localize themselves/be localized, navigate to points of interest, and get displayed contents based on their position. A dedicated network protocol provides secure and reliable communication among divers and supports their localization. Our system has been developed by leveraging on the SUNSET Software Defined Communication Stack (S-SDCS) framework and its modular architecture and networking capabilities. In our demonstration we show, through an emulated underwater network environment, the flexibility and effectiveness of our system in allowing divers and surface operators to securely and reliably communicate using underwater tablets and acoustic networking. The navigation and acoustic tracking of divers will be also shown through a novel application interface.