Broadband wireless battery-free acoustic identification tags for high data-rate underwater backscatter communication

Ananya Bhardwaj; Alper Erturk; Karim G Sabra

doi:10.1121/10.0034835

Broadband wireless battery-free acoustic identification tags for high data-rate underwater backscatter communication

J Acoust Soc Am. 2025 Jan 1;157(1):445-458. doi: 10.1121/10.0034835.

Authors

Ananya Bhardwaj¹, Alper Erturk¹, Karim G Sabra¹

Affiliation

¹ George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA.

PMID: 39846775
DOI: 10.1121/10.0034835

Abstract

Developing persistent and smart underwater markers is critical for improving navigation accuracy and communication capabilities of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). A wireless acoustic identification tag, which uses a piezoelectric transducer tuned in the broadband ultrasonic range (200-500 kHz), was experimentally demonstrated to achieve highly efficient power transfer (source-to-tag electrical power efficiency of >2% at 6 m) and concurrent high data rate and backscatter level communication (>83.3 kbit s-1, >170 dB sound pressure level at 6 m) with potential operating range ≈ 10 m based on analytical extrapolations. Parameter selection considerations dictated by the desired range and data-rate requirements in communication are presented. The transducer piezoelectric element selection, impedance matching approach, and simulation-based circuit optimization for frequency multiplexed operation are also detailed. Experimental tests benchmarking performance sensitivity to source and tag misalignment are introduced and implications for AUV operations are discussed.