AquaScope: Reliable Underwater Image Transmission on Mobile Devices
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Feb 15, 2025
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.
