Tutorial 3 hands-on: Hands-on with software defined modems & underwater networks

Tutorial 3 hands-on: Hands-on with software defined modems & underwater networks

Software-defined underwater modems and networks are rapidly gaining popularity due to the flexibility they afford in communicating underwater in challenging environments. With advances in low-power computing technology and flexible software architectures, some modems are able to support not only customizable network stacks, but also reprogrammable signaling at the physical layer. This enables researchers & engineers to customize the behaviors of the modems to robustly communicate in many challenging environments, and to take advantage of special features of the channel, such as propagation delay and channel sparsity. It also allows modems to interact closely with the command & control systems of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), providing critical information for adaptive path planning in light of communication & navigation constraints. In this workshop, we will explore how software-defined modems and network stacks work, and provide attendees with hands-on experience developing applications that utilize the software-defined features of modems. We will see how the modems can be used for not only communication tasks, but also as transmitters and receivers for acoustic localization & navigation applications. The workshop will use UnetStack as the software platform for the hands-on part of the workshop.

Tutorial hands-on and demos are divided in three groups which will rotate together every hour: