NETSIM: A Realtime Virtual Ocean Hardware-in-the-loop Acoustic Modem Network Simulator

This paper presents netsim, a combined software/hardware system for performing realtime realistic operation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with acoustic modem telemetry in a virtual ocean environment. The design of the system is flexible to the choice of physical link hardware, allowing fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:2018 Fourth Underwater Communications and Networking Conference (UComms)
Main Authors: Schneider, Toby, Schmidt, Henrik
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123822
https://doi.org/10.1109/UComms.2018.8493188
Description
Summary:This paper presents netsim, a combined software/hardware system for performing realtime realistic operation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) with acoustic modem telemetry in a virtual ocean environment. The design of the system is flexible to the choice of physical link hardware, allowing for the system to be tested against existing and new modems. Additionally, the virtual ocean channel simulator is designed to perform in real time by coupling less frequent asynchronous queries to high-fidelity models of the ocean environment and acoustic propagation with frequent pertubation-based updates for the exact position of the simulated AUVs. The results demonstrate the performance of this system using the WHOI Micro-Modem 2 hardware in the virtual ocean environment of the Arctic Beaufort Sea around 73 degrees latitude. The acoustic environment in this area has changed dramatically in recent years due to the changing climate.