• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Academic Programs
    • WHOI Theses
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • Academic Programs
    • WHOI Theses
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Progressively communicating rich telemetry from autonomous underwater vehicles via relays

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Murphy_thesis.pdf (27.72Mb)
    Date
    2012-06
    Author
    Murphy, Christopher A.  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5239
    DOI
    10.1575/1912/5239
    Keyword
     Underwater acoustic telemetry; Vehicles, remotely piloted 
    Abstract
    As analysis of imagery and environmental data plays a greater role in mission construction and execution, there is an increasing need for autonomous marine vehicles to transmit this data to the surface. Without access to the data acquired by a vehicle, surface operators cannot fully understand the state of the mission. Communicating imagery and high-resolution sensor readings to surface observers remains a significant challenge – as a result, current telemetry from free-roaming autonomous marine vehicles remains limited to ‘heartbeat’ status messages, with minimal scientific data available until after recovery. Increasing the challenge, longdistance communication may require relaying data across multiple acoustic hops between vehicles, yet fixed infrastructure is not always appropriate or possible. In this thesis I present an analysis of the unique considerations facing telemetry systems for free-roaming Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) used in exploration. These considerations include high-cost vehicle nodes with persistent storage and significant computation capabilities, combined with human surface operators monitoring each node. I then propose mechanisms for interactive, progressive communication of data across multiple acoustic hops. These mechanisms include wavelet-based embedded coding methods, and a novel image compression scheme based on texture classification and synthesis. The specific characteristics of underwater communication channels, including high latency, intermittent communication, the lack of instantaneous end-to-end connectivity, and a broadcast medium, inform these proposals. Human feedback is incorporated by allowing operators to identify segments of data thatwarrant higher quality refinement, ensuring efficient use of limited throughput. I then analyze the performance of these mechanisms relative to current practices. Finally, I present CAPTURE, a telemetry architecture that builds on this analysis. CAPTURE draws on advances in compression and delay tolerant networking to enable progressive transmission of scientific data, including imagery, across multiple acoustic hops. In concert with a physical layer, CAPTURE provides an endto- end networking solution for communicating science data from autonomous marine vehicles. Automatically selected imagery, sonar, and time-series sensor data are progressively transmitted across multiple hops to surface operators. Human operators can request arbitrarily high-quality refinement of any resource, up to an error-free reconstruction. The components of this system are then demonstrated through three field trials in diverse environments on SeaBED, OceanServer and Bluefin AUVs, each in different software architectures.
    Description
    Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution June 2012
    Collections
    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    • WHOI Theses
    Suggested Citation
    Thesis: Murphy, Christopher A., "Progressively communicating rich telemetry from autonomous underwater vehicles via relays", 2012-06, DOI:10.1575/1912/5239, https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5239
     

    Related items

    Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

    • Thumbnail

      Controller design for underwater vehicle systems with communication constraints 

      Reed, Brooks L. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2015-02)
      Real-time cooperation between autonomous vehicles can enable time-critical missions such as tracking and pursuit of a dynamic target or environmental feature, but relies on wireless communications. Underwater communication ...
    • Thumbnail

      Characterization of underwater target geometry from Autonomous Underwater Vehicle sampling of bistatic acoustic scattered fields 

      Fischell, Erin M. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2015-06)
      One of the long term goals of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) minehunting is to have multiple inexpensive AUVs in a harbor autonomously classify hazards. Existing acoustic methods for target classification using ...
    • Thumbnail

      Evaluation of vector sensors for adaptive equalization in underwater acoustic communication 

      Lewis, Matthew R. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2014-09)
      Underwater acoustic communication is an extremely complex field that faces many challenges due to the time-varying nature of the ocean environment. Vector sensors are a proven technology that when utilizing their directional ...
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo