Demo UNEW

The Intelligent Sensing and Communications (ISC) group at Newcastle University has 30 years’ experience in underwater acoustic communications, positioning, sonar and wireless sensor networks, with >£10M in funding in these areas from UK, EU, MoD and industry. The team works on fundamental algorithm development as well as taking technologies to high TRL demonstrators and working with industrial partners to produce commercial products for offshore energy, scientific and diving markets. The group partnered in the FP7 project Cognitive Autonomous Diver Assistant (CADDY), developing communications and positioning for an autonomous diver assistance vehicle, and led the £1.3M EPSRC project “USMART – Smart dust for large scale underwater wireless sensing” to develop large scale underwater sensor networks. They are currently partners in the EU MONUSEN and NetTag+ projects and the EPSRC COUSIN project. Key contributions of the group have been the development of multi-channel receivers which incorporate adaptive algorithms for Doppler tracking and multipath suppression, achieving communication at rates of up to 100 kbits/s and ranges up to 100 km. The group has a strong track record in hardware implementation of advanced signal processing algorithms and the design and execution of field trials in the North Sea and Mediterranean. Recently the team has focused efforts on the development of miniature, low cost underwater communication and positioning technology based on robust spread spectrum techniques, secure interoperable underwater communications and low-energy passive acoustic sensing systems. This technology has been successfully commercialised with 4 UK/EU companies and these products were the subject of 4* rated Impact case studies for the UK REF2014 and REF2021.