Acoustic Communications for UUVs

The use of Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs) as off-board sensor platforms for complex missions such as MCM reconnaissance requires an acoustic communication link for command and control as well as mission data product upload. The communications link needs to be robust and useful in a number of different scenarios. These scenarios include a variety of frequency regimes and a number of different sized vehicles with different capabilities. However, there is a continuum of performance regions that are possible given a certain investment in transducer and array hardware on the vehicle. Based on a balance between mission requirements and UUV cost the proper system may be designed. Ultimately, the acoustic communication link will be an ubiquitous part of every underwater vehicle, for the present we are exploring the level of performance available with practical technology available at this point in time.