Abstract
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) require long-distance communication, especially in the deep sea. Acoustics communication and wireless optical communication have limitations of low latency and water conditions effects respectively. Radiofrequency (RF) communication provides a high data rate with free orientation of the transmitter/receiver antennas. However, electromagnetic waves are highly restricted by high attenuation over short distances in the underwater medium. In this study, we investigated the RF communication in a tank full of seawater. A loop antenna and rectangular antenna were used for the base station and AUV respectively. The experiments were conducted to measure the transmission rate with different distances between the base station and the AUV using both User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). Live video streaming with framerate analysis was considered. The results show the effect of the distance between the transmitter and receiver on the transmission rate, in addition, to the antenna's stability has huge effects on the connection stability. We successfully achieved a High-Definition (HD) video streaming with 25fps for over 1 meter.