A control system for OFDM networked autonomous underwater vehicles

Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) networks are becoming increasingly popular in scientific, commercial, and military applications. AUVs are used in undersea exploration and environmental monitoring for tasks such as detection of oilfields and marine life, distributed tactical surveillance for offshore and seaport defense and mine reconnaissance. AUV networks are also becoming an important interest in an effort to enhance the capabilities of underwater sensor networks (UWSNs). In this paper we propose a control system for networked autonomous underwater vehicles that includes both hardware and software modules. The system integrates various communication and sensor devices, such as an IMU and an OFDM acoustic modem and contains a graphical user interface for optional manual remote control and monitoring of AUVs in the network from a base station.