Communication networks for the monitoring of aquatic environments

Environmental monitoring, while fundamental, is challenging to perform in harsh and complex environments. Aquatic ecosystems, in particular, represent some of the most difficult places from which to retrieve data and conduct sustained oversight. The need for such monitoring is dictated by several critical factors. First, the ongoing climate change resulting from human activities requires scientists and engineers to continuously oversee environmental dynamics to better understand and predict their behavior. Second, the current geopolitical situation necessitates an augmented deployment of tools to monitor and protect coastal environments. In this regard, the security and integrity of communication are of paramount importance. A central requirement for all environmental monitoring is the reliable transmission of data from deployed sensors to collection centers. This information is crucial for informing decision-making processes and developing strategic plans. The maturity of wireless communication technologies has reached a point where real-time data transmission from Wireless Sensor Networks is a viable and effective solution. This approach offers numerous advantages, enabling a more efficient and effective decision-making process, ensuring more accurate results, and facilitating a rapid response to emergencies and threats. This work explores solutions for implementing wireless communication for the retrieval and transmission of data from sensor networks to collection and analysis centers. Given that aquatic environments encompass both surface and subsurface domains, this study is divided into two main parts: one focusing on above-water wireless communications using standard electromagnetic technologies, and a second on underwater wireless communications. The latter is a significantly less explored and structured field, a challenge exemplified by the lack of standardized protocols. A third section of this work is dedicated to the security of underwater communications. While a wide variety of established algorithms and protocols enable security in standard electromagnetic communications, research in this area is still ongoing for underwater environments. We propose novel algorithms and schemes to detect potential intruders in an underwater acoustic network. This work was partly supported by a collaboration with Wireless and More srl, which provided the opportunity for a highly practical and experimental approach. The proposed solutions were extensively validated through numerous tests and field trials in addition to simulations and numerical analysis.