Autonomous sensors in the form of enhanced sensor arrays that are networked will play an important role in improving capability in northern and maritime situational awareness and response in coastal waters. Autonomous sensor networks have the potential to reduce manning requirements and to be deployed in a harsh environment where they can self-organize and perform adaptive and collaborative tasks. Communication and co-ordination solutions are required to combine clusters of diverse, low power, expendable sensors into a surveillance network. In addition, such communication networks can be used to control mine-hunting and reconnaissance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) and also to guide and control countermeasure devices.

The aim of this project is to develop the technology for Seabed sensing networks that employ short-range communication methods to allow cooperative sensor pod operations without interconnecting wires. More specifically, a new concept in underwater networking known as Low-Complexity Access Networks (LCAN), will be developed, tested, and demonstrated.

Networking Aspects:

1. Energy efficient and delay-aware MAC protocols
2. Real-time and bandwidth efficient networking solutions
3. Cross-layering