Detection, tracking and characterization of Fish

• Detection of individuals within schools of fish​

• Positioning of tracked fish​

• Estimation of bio-mass​

• Classification based on target strength (seismic)​

Classification of fish from images (Optic or Sonar)

• Image segmentation​

• Machine learning classification​

• Motion characterization​

Hydroacoustic research

Underwater Acoustic Communication (mid range 1-5km): focus on robust medium range communication to allow transmission of text, voice, pictures, and video. The main goal is to achieve robustness to various sea conditions. Activities include:

• Doppler shift estimation and compensation

• Channel estimation

• Fast communication using OFDM and turbo-equalizers

• Spatial reuse using MIMO.

• Spatial focusing using time-reversal

• Channel coding

• Communication for low probability of detection

• Experiments

Underwater Acoustic Communication (long range >50km): the focus will be on robust long range communication to allow robust low rate communication. Activities include:

• Channel modeling

• Channel estimation

• Develop of unique modulation schemes

• Experiments

Underwater Networks: development of entire stack layer for network supporting both unicast and broadcast transmissions for any (unknown) network topology. Activities include:

• Topology estimation.

• Development of spatial and time-reuse scheduling schemes.

• Routing protocols under a time-varying topology

• Hybrid ARQ schemes for re-transmission of lost packets.

• Smart packet segmentation.

• Time-synchronization between network nodes.

• Multimodel switch for acoustic and optic communication.

• Experiments.

Detection of signals: development of detectors for signals of known and unknown structure to handle target detection and false alarm probabilities. Activities include:

• Robust detection schemes to handle multi-path, transients, time-varying noise

• Blind classification of signals for ‘noise’ or ‘signal’

• Extraction of signal features from detected signals

• Experiments

Underwater Image compression: Due to the low bit rate of underwater acoustic communication, the focus here will be to find unique image (pictures and video) compression techniques for the underwater environment. 

Object Detection and Classification: the objective is to detect and classify in real-time an object of interest in picture or sonar data of an AUV. The activities will include:

• Modeling of objects of interest

• Collection of data from AUVs

• Deep-learning based classification

• Development of real-time detectors and classifiers

• Experiments

Acoustic Measurements: 

• Extraction of noise characteristics

• Estimation of power attenuation

• Estimation of target strength

• Experiments.

Underwater navigation research

Observability analysis: the goal in this study is to learn what are the navigation features that can be updated given a set of measurements and a certain type of maneuvering.

Navigation in shallow water: the focus here is to compensate for fast time-varying pitch and roll angles due to surface waves. Activities include: 

• Estimation of time-varying pitch angles using only acceleration measurements

• Dead-reckoning in shallow water

• Tracking motion under pitch and roll uncertainties

• Experiments

Online calibration of sensors

Self localization: the focus here is to estimate the geographical location of a sensors given transmissions from anchor nodes. Activities include: 

• Range estimation in multi-path

• Localization under sound speed uncertainties

• Tracking location while utilizing knowledge of the drift motion of anchors

• Experiments