AquaScope: Reliable Underwater Image Transmission on Mobile Devices

TL;DR

AquaScope is a novel acoustic communication system that enables reliable underwater image transmission on mobile devices by combining advanced compression and error resilience techniques, overcoming environmental challenges.

Contribution

It is the first system to facilitate underwater image transmission on commodity mobile devices using acoustic communication with enhanced compression and reliability methods.

Findings

Supports reliable, low-latency underwater image transmission

Operates effectively under bandwidth constraints and high error rates

Demonstrated on Android platform with promising results

Abstract

Underwater communication is essential for both recreational and scientific activities, such as scuba diving. However, existing methods remain highly constrained by environmental challenges and often require specialized hardware, driving research into more accessible underwater communication solutions. While recent acoustic-based communication systems support text messaging on mobile devices, their low data rates severely limit broader applications. We present AquaScope, the first acoustic communication system capable of underwater image transmission on commodity mobile devices. To address the key challenges of underwater environments -- limited bandwidth and high transmission errors -- AquaScope employs and enhances generative image compression to improve compression efficiency, and integrates it with reliability-enhancement techniques at the physical layer to strengthen error resilience. We implemented AquaScope on the Android platform and demonstrated its feasibility for underwater image transmission. Experimental results show that AquaScope enables reliable, low-latency image transmission while preserving perceptual image quality, across various bandwidth-constrained and error-prone underwater conditions.