Plenary Session

 Philippe Blondel Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Bath

Marine soundscapes – Human impacts and Blue Economy sustainability in a changing world

The oceans are rapidly changing, subject to accelerating human impacts and climate changes. Underwater acoustics is the key tool to measure these variations and address the challenge of sustainability. Focusing on research projects recently conducted at Bath (renewable energies, polar regions, offshore engineering), we will show the advances and the issues associated with the very large amounts of “big data”, their automatic processing, including with AI and Deep Learning, and their reliability and traceability. These tools are essential to monitor human impacts, the sustainability of the emerging Blue Economy and possible paths for adapting to climate changes.

Keynote Speakers

S.18 Underwater acoustics: from noise to communication

   Christian Renner, Hamburg University of Technology

Below the Surface: A Journey in Underwater Acoustics

 When people think about the IoT and CPS---provided they recognize these terms at all---they have smart cities, machines, homes and other things naturally residing above the water surface on their minds. However, more than 70% of our Earth are covered by water and there are many use cases for smart sensing and acting, if you think about it. It was a rather unrelated decision during my PostDoc time, when I literally switched sides---of the water surface, from above to below.

Coming from a world where devices cost some ten Euros and wireless connectivity adds another few, I was faced with a different world where you either had no connectivity or you had to spent (another) fortune. While this may be feasible in certain domains---e.g., 6-to-more-digit price-tag underwater robots---it is absolutely ridiculous for small environmental sensors or
other cheap devices. And of course, this may be a problem depending on how your research is funded.

In this keynote talk, I will talk you through my 10-year journey in underwater acoustic communication.
Diving into this world spawned completely new research questions and challenges, plus it provided opportunity for a combination of applied and fundamental research with high innovation potential, including applications in underwater
environmental and structural monitoring.

I will give an overview of these challenges and the achievements of my group with particular focus on underwater communication, localization, and navigation for autonomous networked systems including micro mobile robots.

I will also shed light on existing links and ongoing research to our related research above the water surface with a particular focus on acoustic backscatter communication.