Deployment of a persistent underwater acoustic sensor network: The CommsNet17 Experience

This paper presents the experimental activities performed by the NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) during the CommsNet17 trial where a persistent Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASN) was deployed. The CommsNet17 trial was held from the 27th of November to the 6th of December in the Gulf of La Spezia (IT), close to the CMRE premises, using the CMRE Littoral Ocean Observatory Network (LOON) as one of its key components. A network consisting of up to eleven nodes was deployed, including static and mobile assets. Various aspects related to persistent UASNs were addressed, including autonomous and distributed network discovery and node configuration, node localisation and navigation, self-adjustment of the network topology in support to the assigned tasks, underwater docking, wireless battery recharging and data offloading. The collected results show that the employed solutions were able to successfully complete all these tasks, thus demonstrating the effective deployment of a persistent, distributed and ad-hoc UASN.