About this Research Topic

Background

Since the sound wave is the only information carrier that can propagate long distances in the ocean, underwater acoustic technology based on sound waves undoubtedly plays an important role in ocean observation. The development of underwater acoustic technology requires the support of various underwater acoustic sensors and signal processing techniques.

The function of an underwater acoustic sensor is to conduct the conversion between an underwater acoustic signal and an electric signal. Their performance directly determines the quality of underwater acoustic equipment. However, the harsh environment such as high pressure, high temperature, and highly corrosive fluids, as well as different requirements such as low frequency, broad bandwidth, high power, and deep water, often affect the physical properties of materials and structural performance of transducers, which deteriorates the transducer performance. Due to the lack of comprehensive research on key techniques including material physical properties and interfacial bond properties, the reliability of structural components is often seriously affected by environmental conditions, which may lead to major performance degradation or even failure with the device performance. Therefore, it is challenging for transducer design to balance the acoustic performance and the device's stability.

On the one hand, underwater acoustic sensors can be installed on fixed platforms such as underwater anchored buoys, submerged buoys, etc. On the other hand, they can also be installed on mobile platforms like underwater robots, ships and so on. To effectively explore, observe and utilize the ocean, multiple sensors are usually combined as a network. The transmission characteristics of underwater acoustic signals are influenced by various factors including propagation loss, multipath effect, Doppler effect, time-varying channel and so on. Additionally, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN) still own limitations like sparsity, limited energy of sensor node, unstable topology, instability of transmission, etc. These restrictions severely degrade the UASN performance in underwater acoustic communication, navigation, localization, environmental perception, array processing, signal detection and so on. Current UASN applications mainly focus on obtaining effective ocean information based on advanced signal processing techniques by considering the transmission characteristics of the underwater acoustic signals and the reliability of sensor networks simultaneously.
The goals of this Research Topic are to discuss recent advancements in underwater acoustic sensors, underwater observation technology based on advanced acoustic signal processors, as well as the application of underwater observation for societal benefit.

This Research Topic invites contributions of original research papers focused on the ocean observation based on underwater acoustic technology with themes: underwater sensor design, smart sensor design, underwater sensor network, underwater acoustic network protocol, underwater acoustic communication, underwater channel modeling, environment perception, ocean acoustic tomography, monitoring of underwater acoustic field, navigation, localization, tracking, detection, seafloor mapping, sub-bottom profiling, and so on.

Keywords: ocean observations, underwater acoustic, underwater sensor, sensor network, processing of sensor signal, tomography

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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