Underwater Acoustic Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: from Principle to Practice

TL;DR

This paper investigates underwater acoustic reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (UA-RIS), demonstrating through field tests that a prototype can effectively reflect acoustic waves, significantly enhancing underwater communication range and data rates.

Contribution

It introduces the first practical UA-RIS prototype with experimental validation, adapting RIS principles from RF to underwater acoustic environments.

Findings

Prototype effectively reflects acoustic waves via passive beamforming.

UA-RIS extends underwater communication range and data rate.

Field tests validate feasibility of UA-RIS in marine environments.

Abstract

This article explores the potential of underwater acoustic reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (UA-RIS) for facilitating long-range and eco-friendly communication in marine environments. Unlike radio frequency-based RIS (RF-RIS), which have been extensively investigated in terrestrial contexts, UA-RIS is an emerging field of study. The distinct characteristics of acoustic waves, including their slow propagation speed and potential for noise pollution affecting marine life, necessitate a fundamentally different approach to the architecture and design principles of UA-RIS compared to RF-RIS. Currently, there is a scarcity of real systems and experimental data to validate the feasibility of UA-RIS in practical applications. To fill this gap, this article presents field tests conducted with a prototype UA-RIS consisting of 24 acoustic elements. The results demonstrate that the developed prototype can effectively reflect acoustic waves to any specified directions through passive beamforming, thereby substantially extending the range and data rate of underwater communication systems.