João Alves (UComms 2012 General Chair, OES AdCom member)
Introduction
The sixth edition of the renowned Underwater Communications and Networking (UComms) conference was held from August 30th to September 1st in the coastal town of Lerici, in the Italian Riviera.
UComms is a biennial, international event organised by the NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE) with the support of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society.
This conference series aims at gathering leading contributors in the field of underwater communications to discuss the latest developments, review the state-of-the-art and collectively find new ways ahead in the challenging world of underwater communications.
This edition marked 10 years since the first UComms was held in Sestri Levanti. Despite the climate of uncertainty, this commemorative edition of UComms was announced as an in-presence event. Following the cancellation of UComms’20 and on-line edition in 2021, this was a much-needed opportunity to re-connect with the community and spend time together for the first time in four years.
Just like in 2018 (the previous in-person edition), this 10-year anniversary took place at the charming Villa Marigola congress centre, a traditional venue for CMRE conferences and a place that continues to please the attendees with its spectacular views and elegant environment.
Topics covered and conference format
With the increased interest in better understanding the Oceans, as well as explore and protect the resources they host, we have seen a similar increase in the demand for technological tools to help with the job.
This has driven the interest in underwater communications as a fundamental enabler to many of the technological solutions on offer. Autonomous vehicles, moored sensors or seabed installations, employed in coastal or deep waters, benefit from underwater communications as an enabler for collaborative autonomy, real-time monitoring, and data fusion.
The physics limitations presented by the underwater domain (which severely impair the usage of optical and electromagnetic radio frequencies) have naturally driven the work on acoustics for applications requiring communication ranges of more than a few tens of meters.
Working with underwater acoustics to establish communications, networks and communication-related services presents fundamental challenges imposed by the physics limitations of pressure waves travelling through water. From high latency to reduced available bandwidth and dependencies on parameters like water temperature and salinity, direct translations from the terrestrial domain are simply not an option.
For these reasons, several sub-domains of interest within the field of underwater communications have naturally established themselves and cover topics such as channel characterization, waveform design, transceiver topologies, networking strategies and security approaches, to name a few.
The UComms conference series aims at discussing all these topics and adopted a format where a series of structured sessions are coordinated by established researchers in the field. Session coordination involves overview of the submission process from invitation of contributions to acceptance decision with the aim of gathering top quality contributions that can lead to a vibrant exchange of knowledge and increased common understanding of the state-of-the-art.
During the conference, the multiple sessions are handled in a single track, giving the opportunity to all participants to follow all the talks and take part in all discussions.
The UComms’22 call for papers was answered by 41 submissions and after a very strict review process (where each final paper was independently and blindly reviewed by at least three reviewers), 32 were invited for presentation, of which 31 were eventually presented.
The technical program of UComms’22 was presented around the following sessions:
- “Physical layer: Propagation, Modulation and Signal Processing” (Hosted by François Socheleau & Konstantinos Pelekanakis), which tackled all aspects of the acoustic communications physical layer, from acoustic propagation to channel equalisation and signal modulation.
- “New Applications Enabled by Next-Generation Underwater Communications” (Hosted by Georgios Sklivanitis and Roberto Petroccia) that looked at interesting new use cases for underwater communications exposing a wide range of communication requirements from an end-user point of view.
- “Underwater Communications Security” (Hosted by Paolo Casari and Roald Otnes) addressed the issues related with data protection and confidentiality of communications in the underwater domain.
- “Optical and Quantum Communications” (Hosted by Norm Farr and Pietro Paglierani) explored the topic of classical optical and Quantum-enabled communications techniques.
- “Adaptive Modem Architectures and Smart Networking Strategies” (Hosted by Henry Dol and Koen Blom) gathered contributions on the development of adaptive communications and machine-learning techniques to improve performance of underwater communications.
In addition to the regular technical contributions, we had the privilege to host three distinguished keynote speakers who delivered fantastic talks on their specific fields of expertise.
Prof. Andrew Singer (Uni. Of Illinois) kicked off the technical program of UComms with his keynote address titled “Underwater Communications Over Many Media and Scales (UCOMMS)” where he presented innovative and unique usages for underwater communications including inside the human body.
On the second day of conference, Prof. Davide Bacco (Uni. Of Florence) addressed the audience on “How Can Quantum Technologies Change Our Business In Underwater Comms?”, providing his expert view on this emerging topic.
For the closure day, the keynote talk was delivered by Prof. Mandar Chitre (NUS Singapore, OES JOE EiC). The title was “Can Machines Learn to Communicate Underwater?” and offered fascinating and very concrete approaches on the usage of machine learning to improve underwater communications,
Eighty-five delegates registered and attended UComms 2022, representing institutions from 16 different countries. As in previous years, generous breaks between sessions provided enhanced networking opportunities.
All papers presented at UComms’22 can already be found in IEEE Xplore. We invite everyone to browse through them, get updated on the latest of underwater communications and find a (little) bit of what UComms is about.
A Special Issue of the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, with expanded versions of selected papers presented during UComms will be prepared as for previous editions
During the social dinner held at the closure of the conference, the Local Organising Committee was presented with a commemorative plaque from the OES in appreciation for 10 years of outstanding conferences and JOE special issues.” This was a particularly proud moment for those that have been involved in the organisation of the conference series since 2012.
Besides the IEEE OES sponsorship, the 2022 edition of UComms had patron support by the following commercial and non-commercial institutions: NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), ONR/ONR-Global, ATLAS Elektronik, Popoto Modem, and Thales UK.
Over the years some important lessons have been identified and learnt in the process of setting up such type of conference. We believe some of those lessons could be of use for other similar events, namely:
- UComms contributions follow a strict 4-page format (plus references). In our experience this contributes to a more concise manuscript and helps the reviewing process. The “short paper” format also plays to the authors advantage when considering an extension into full article for JOE submission.
- All pre-print versions of the manuscripts are shared with registered delegates (secure link, password protected and available to registered delegates only) one week before the conference starts. This has shown to considerably improve the quality of discussions by giving participants an opportunity to read the manuscripts before the presentation.
- The presentation slot includes 10 minutes of Q&A moderated by the session organisers, which has proven to be a great contribution for the overall value of the event.
- The abstract sections of all manuscripts are openly shared in the conference website in a compiled “Book of abstracts,” increasing awareness and interest in the conference technical content.
Participant Feedback
A key aspect of shaping UComms is collecting feedback from participants. Just like in previous editions, an anonymous online survey was conducted to which 57 participants kindly responded.
The responses collected show us that:
- 98% of participants were either “extremely satisfied” or “very satisfied” with the conference. One participant declared to being “neither satisfied nor unsatisfied”.
- 98% found the technical content to be either “very strong” or “strong”.
- 91% found the networking opportunities to be “extremely useful” or “very useful”.
- In terms of location, 51% prefer to keep the conference in Lerici again while 21% favor a rotating location. 13% voted to keep it in Europe while 9% voted to move it around in Italy.
- Concerning format, schedule and periodicity, the vast majority agrees with keeping it a biennial event, single track, with 25 minutes per presentation to accommodate discussions over 3 days.
Future UComms Conferences
Following the encouraging feedback from authors, participants and sponsors, we will, with no doubt, aim at continuing to organize UComms.
Several institutions from different locations in the world have expressed the willingness to host UComms in the future. This is certainly appealing as a possible way to maintain vitality of the conference series. No decisions have been made and we are certainly conscious of the participants feedback discussed above.
In any case, the aim will remain to organize an event where the leading scholars and practitioners want to be. For this to happen, technical quality needs to remain the central focus. Additionally, we are well aware of the importance of creating a relaxed, pleasant and collegial environment where open discussions can create the sparks of change. Good hospitality will always be important for UComms.
See you in 2024!
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.