Immerse yourself into the sea world with KAUST made high quality videostreaming system

Nowadays, underwater photography has been specifically categorized as a hobby plus a legit profession but irrespective of your experience in the field, technology is far away from hitting the apex of its progressive evolution. The theory of a tech-based century hints to decrease the gross amount of human labor and to facilitate the trend, scientists/technologists approach a problem for finding a "solution" that not only enhances the quality of the work but also reduces the cumulative human effort.

Today's story tells us about an underwater video system, freshly out of incubation, which holds an immense potential for streaming underwater videos. The system is cost-effective, flexible and accounts for high-quality video streaming by manipulating the bandwidth.

underwater_videostreaming_quality_enhanced
Abdullah Al-Halafi checks the received optical signal power through the underwater channels [KAUST]

Much to our regret, oceans beings the sole abundant source of water, housing a vast and mysterious world of floras and faunas, was treated with ignorance. As a result, the environment was polluted and now demands and deserves our attention. Besides, the ocean-world containing two-thirds of our planet reserves different kinds of bio-elements, oil wells, minerals, shipwrecks and plenty of valuable information that can detail our past and predict our future. Significant as the land, it is a complete research area where experts need to inspect.

Here comes the wireless technology and its applications which having the scope in making a real-time video can vastly improve the scientific explorations. This technology can specifically search for underwater pipelines, cables, offshore oil and gas fields in areas where water is too shallow for remotely operated vehicles and hiring divers can involve impractical cost implications.

The university publication explained contemporary technologies like acoustic communications and low-frequency radio waves have restrictions due to narrow-bandwidth streaming and the requirement for large antennae and high-transmission powers make them obsolete for such applications where good quality streaming is a must.

Abdullah Al-Halafi, a Ph.D. student with his supervisor Basem Shihada and team, initially explored underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) systems and integrated a programmable video transmission system in a UWOC framework. As claimed, the system demands less power and provides higher bandwidth. When asked, Al-Halafi explained that even though the system was complex but the flexibility of the system achieved through programming helped him develop a lot of variants with reconfigurable arrangements.

Technically to improve the signal, the team used quadrature amplitude modulation to enhance the information carried by the signal represented per a stated bandwidth. Further, the result was compared with phase-shift keying that alters the phase of the carrier signal, optimizing the transmission for each arrangement. In measuring the system performance the team devised an algorithm to measure the bit error rate. It was further tested by passing the signal through a five-meter trough of water with different turbidity which checked the quality of the real-time video streaming under different water conditions.

As it infers, the team was able to produce the most effective system under UWOC set-up that will help in underwater research. The complete research work has been published in OSA.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#| discovery.kaust.edu.sa

Replies

  • Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Sarathkumar Chandrasekaran
    Excellent article.
    Under water communication will boost in getting better understanding of the ocean and help us to reach places where it was difficult with present equipment and technology.😁

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