AquaScope: Reliable Underwater Image Transmission on Mobile Devices

2025-02-15

AI Summary

Underwater image transmission is severely constrained by narrow acoustic channel bandwidth, high bit error rates (BER), and reliance on specialized hardware. To address these challenges, this paper proposes the first underwater acoustic image transmission system implemented entirely on commodity mobile devices (Android), eliminating the need for custom hardware. Our approach introduces an end-to-end co-design framework that jointly optimizes generative image compression—based on a variational autoencoder (VAE) and generative adversarial network (GAN) architecture—with physical-layer reliability techniques, including adaptive modulation and forward error correction coding. Evaluated across diverse adverse underwater channels, the system achieves low latency (<3.2 s) and high-fidelity image reconstruction while reducing BER by 42%. This significantly enhances robustness and practicality under severe bandwidth constraints. The work establishes a scalable, low-cost paradigm for underwater visual communication, bridging the gap between deep learning–driven compression and wireless physical-layer design.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for Vision
• Machine Learning: Learning on the Edge & Model Compression
• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: On-Device user modeling, personalization, and recommendation

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.

Problem

• Enables underwater image transmission
• Improves compression and error resilience
• Operates on commodity mobile devices

Innovation

• Generative image compression enhancement
• Physical layer reliability-enhancement techniques
• Acoustic communication on mobile devices