Exploring Cognitive Techniques for Bandwidth Management in Integrated Underwater Acoustic Systems

The richness in the largely unexplored ocean is increasingly fueling research in underwater networks. Unlike their terrestrial counterparts, underwater networks are likely to remain sparse and mobile due to prohibitive costs and extremely harsh underwater environment. It remains a challenge to coordinate access between navigation and data signals and between Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and sensor nodes due to the limited underwater bandwidth. In this paper, the authors explore how dynamic spectrum sharing concepts inspired by the advance in cognitive radio technology can be used for spectrum management to achieve integrated communication and navigation in Integrated Underwater Acoustic Systems.