In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Yahong Rosa Zheng, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, comments on the communication challenges developers of undersea drones face that are not experienced by those developing aerial drones.
Zheng, whose research interests include underwater cyber-physical systems, real-time embedded systems and signal processing, wireless communications, and wireless sensor networks, says that communicating in real time is much more difficult when transmissions must be sent through water rather than air, because water is a much thicker medium.
"Undersea drones can use a few different methods of communication, such as acoustics, but must be willing to trade off a slower data rate, shorter transmission distance, or both," Zheng explains, according to the article, "The Navy is starting to put up real money for robot submarines."