AUVs as mobile nodes in acoustic communication networks: Field experience at the UAN10 experiment

The UAN - Underwater Acoustic Network - project has among its goals the investigation of networked communication modalities in which mobile nodes are located in the environment in order to optimize the communication characteristics of the acoustic channel. The mobile network nodes in UAN are placed on Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) carrying appropriate acoustic modems and capable of autonomous decisions. With this contribution we focus on the architectural design and implementation on AUVs of the “Folaga” class of a mission supervisor handling the communication, environmental sampling and decision making tasks, and reports the first results in terms of network communication capabilities as obtained in the UAN10 experimental activities that took place in the Tuscan Archipelago, Mediterranean Sea, in September 2010.