• Question: How does underwater wifi work?

    Asked by Amy15 to Tom on 19 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Tom Rooney

      Tom Rooney answered on 19 Jun 2017:

      Hi Amy,
      Much the same way as your home wifi works except instead of using radio waves we use sound waves.
      Messages and data can be encoded digitally into the sonic carrier waves and transmitted through the water over great distances (2000m+) from one acoustic transducer to another (or a network of them). The download speed is pretty slow though, because sound is MUCH slower than radio, so you are limited in what data you can send, usually environmental sensor readings or position data only.
      However for greater bandwidth we also make a system that works with light rather than sound; it’s like a fibre optic system… without the fibre. This system can transmit/receive live video, remote vehicle control or imaging data at much higher speeds than acoustic sytems, but over shorter distances (up to 150m MAX).
      Hope this answers your question

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