With a few taps, your smartphone can connect to wireless networks all over the world, but connectivity stops at the surface of the water. Using a network of sensors, a team of researchers have unveiled plans to knit the world above and below the waves together to create an underwater internet. The proposed technology has the potential to improve scientific data gathering, as well as make important early warning systems more accessible and reliable.

Web standards keep the internet we know and love from devolving into clusters of incompatible networks, and this is exactly the problem with underwater communication — there are no universal standards. The network technology developed by the University of Buffalo team would act as a bridge between all the current and future underwater sensor networks, and make them compatible with conventional IP networks. By pulling these systems together under one umbrella, the underwater signals can be connected with regular wireless devices on the surface like laptops and smartphones.

It’s not as simple as just extending land-based wireless networks underwater, though. The high frequency radio waves used for wireless communication above the waves don’t work very well underwater. That’s why scientists have long employed sound-based communication in underwater research. For example, NOAA uses acoustic waves to transmit data from seafloor tsunami sensors to buoys on the surface, which then convert signals to radio waves and beam them to satellites.

Researchers have tested the protocol with their own set of underwater sensors in nearby Lake Erie. Their hefty 40-pound sensors are not final products; this research is laying out a method of building the underwater internet with existing technology. Implementing the technology developed in the lab, the team was able to get a small acoustic sensor network up and running in the lake that was compatible with wireless devices on the surface.

The headlining application for this technology could be to tie the networks of tsunami detection sensors together for better and more reliable early warnings. The same goes for systems that monitor oceanographic data or pollution levels. They could also be linked together to do away with unnecessary duplication of data collection.

The researchers from the University at Buffalo hope that adoption of an open protocol like the one they have devised will encourage more open exchange of data in oceanic research. Better disaster preparedness is only the beginning. The energy sector could use the underwater internet to refine seismic studies of potential resource deposits, and marine biologists could more accurately track animal populations across the globe. Simply connecting the technology that’s already down there could make a world of difference.

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