BlueBuzz, an Open-Source Acoustic Modem

Abstract

The high resource costs associated with performing aquatic-based research has led to the active development of mu-Net, a shared research infrastructure consisting of indoor and outdoor testbeds with open-source underwater networking software. These testbeds will require real-time acoustic communication, but there is a lack of commercial or other available acoustic modems that meet the needs for the indoor testbed. With the indoor testbed relying on custom hardware and an expected large variety of underwater robots, the acoustic modem must be: reconfigurable to fit in new ecosystems, open-source to permit modification, easy to access to allow researchers with varying hardware expertise to use/modify, functional in indoor environments with large multipath effects, and interoperable among a variety of hardware ecosystems. In this paper, we propose the BlueBuzz, an open-source acoustic modem that allows for easy integration into a variety of platforms, is reconfigurable, and has been experimentally verified in multiple environments.