DEMO: ECHO-GATE: A Multi-Protocol Gateway for Reliable Underwater-to-Terrestrial Connectivity
The increasing use of underwater sensors and autonomous underwater platforms creates a growing need for reliable connectivity between submerged systems and terrestrial communication infrastructure. This demo presents ECHO-GATE, a configurable multi-protocol gateway that bridges underwater acoustic communication with LoRa, NB-IoT, and Iridium satellite links. ECHO-GATE integrates all three terrestrial technologies and selects the most appropriate link for each message according to availability, communication cost, and energy consumption. If the preferred link is unavailable, communication automatically switches to an alternative and returns when connectivity recovers. To support long-term battery operation, radio interfaces are powered only when needed, while undelivered messages are buffered and retried. Communication is bidirectional: data from underwater platforms is forwarded to remote users or cloud services, while commands and configuration updates can travel back through the available link. The gateway can operate as a continuous relay for low latency or in an energy-efficient scheduled mode. Its configurable acoustic interface allows the same firmware to support different serial acoustic modems while forwarding payloads transparently. The demo showcases resilient, energy-aware underwater-to-cloud connectivity for environmental monitoring, marine robotics, offshore infrastructure monitoring, and distributed underwater networks.