{"id":7766,"date":"2024-04-04T17:15:08","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T06:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidn.org.au\/?p=7766"},"modified":"2024-06-14T16:33:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T06:33:19","slug":"defence-scientists-tackle-underwater-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/defence-scientists-tackle-underwater-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"Defence scientists tackle underwater communication"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Article courtesy of the Australian Department of Defence<\/p>

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MEDIA RELEASE<\/strong><\/p>

Communicating underwater is no easy feat \u2013 and the process becomes even more complex when the communication needs to be secure.<\/p>

In the underwater domain, radio signals don\u2019t transmit far, optical sensors only travel efficiently for about 50m and underwater acoustics suffer from noise, interference, echoes and delays in transmission.<\/p>

A program set up by the United Kingdom\u2019s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), and supported by scientists from Australia\u2019s Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG), aims to address this problem.<\/p>

Phorcys is a set of protocols intended to provide Defence personnel with secured-by-design underwater communication.<\/p>

Acting almost like an \u2018acoustic WiFi\u2019 in the ocean, Phorcys enables personnel and systems working underwater to communicate securely with other submerged vehicles \u2013 or even transmit information and messages to assets on the surface.<\/p>

With the scope of the underwater battlespace changing, including the increased use of autonomous vehicles for low-level operations or mine-hunting, the need for a tool that ensures ongoing high-level security is a priority.<\/p>

Phorcys encodes all data it transmits and cannot be deciphered without access to a cryptographic key.<\/p>

Acting almost like an \u2018acoustic WiFi\u2019 in the ocean, Phorcys enables personnel and systems working underwater to communicate securely with other submerged vehicles.<\/p>

This means information shared between various underwater assets can be protected by different classification levels and caveats.<\/p>

DSTG Discipline Lead Justin Dinale said there was a major focus on integrating Phorcys into underwater autonomous vehicles and sensors.<\/p>

\u201cWe would love to integrate Phorcys into emerging capabilities, like Rock Lobster, our underwater communication node,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Investigating and addressing the challenges of communicating underwater has been an interesting experiment.<\/p>

\u201cWe have to examine the way information is transmitted underwater, as well as how different Defence systems talk to each other,\u201d Mr Dinale said.<\/p>

Mr Dinale said he doesn\u2019t envisage Phorcys being the sole solution for Defence\u2019s underwater communication.<\/p>

\u201cWe believe the primary communication method will be a sovereign capability, and Phorcys will be used for interoperability with our partners,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Since the beginning of its development in 2018 \u2013 in partnership with the UK Government, Sonardyne, QinetiQ, Newcastle University and University of York \u2013 the capability has been undergoing testing in a range of Defence contexts, including the Autonomous Warrior 2023 exercise in Jervis Bay.<\/p>

At this exercise, through the support of L3 Harris and Forcys Australia, L3Harris IMSA and Sonardyne modems transmitted to each other.<\/p>

\u201cAutonomous Warrior was an excellent opportunity to get industry stakeholders together to work on the prototype,\u201d Mr Dinale said.<\/p>

\u201cThis year, we will continue to work with our industry partners to strengthen their Phorcys implementation\u2019s Doppler & Interference resistance and noise performance.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Article courtesy of the Australian Department of Defence MEDIA RELEASE Communicating underwater is no easy feat \u2013 and the process becomes even more complex when the communication needs to be secure. In the underwater domain, radio signals don\u2019t transmit far, optical sensors only travel efficiently for about 50m and underwater acoustics suffer from noise, interference, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","pmpro-has-access"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidn.sparkweb.cloud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}