Enabling cooperation and networking in heterogeneous underwater networks composed of multi-vendor vehicles and modems

The cooperation and networking in heterogeneous underwater networks composed of vehicles running different control software and multi-vendor modems are a key issue due to the lack of standard. Since the interaction between different and multiple assets is of paramount importance for several application scenarios, in this paper we first present the new SUNSET Software Defined Communication Stack (SDCS) framework architecture that enables the support of multiple and multi-vendor modems. These multi-modal features and new networking protocols allow the communication between assets equipped with different modems through nodes acting as bridge. Then we present the extension of the SSC protocol to support the ROS middleware thus enabling the cooperation between mobile underwater vehicles running different middleware. Such integration and the multi-modal bridging functionalities have been tested and validated through several in-lab and in-field experiments. In particular, SUNSET SDCS has been used to acoustically control in real-time the MARTA AUV running ROS by leveraging on the SSC protocol. In addition, MARTA has been used as a bridging gateway to allow the communication between nodes equipped with multi-vendor modems thanks to the SUNSET SDCS multi-modal capabilities. The results show how the proposed system allows the cooperation and communication in heterogeneous networks composed of different and multi-vendors assets.