Exploring the statistical relation between the underwater acoustic and optical channels

Abstract

In this paper, we are interested in finding whether a statistical relationship exists between underwater acoustics and optics, despite the different physics that govern these technologies. Besides the theoretical interest of such a relationship, predicting the quality of the optical links through acoustics is relevant for multimodal communications. Our study is based on a large dataset acquired during the NATO ALOMEX 2015 expedition. The dataset consists of several acoustic and optical link characteristics measured at multiple locations, reflecting a diversity of sea environments. Our results, based on a systematic machine learning analysis, show a strong correlation between the properties of acoustic links and the reliability of optical communications. Potentially, this can be leveraged to predict the state of underwater optical links.