The main objective is to research and design an underwater wireless communications system for the protection of critical infrastructures such as oil and gas installations. It addresses the challenges in network architecture and protocol design for deploying 3-D deep-water heterogeneous wireless communications networks to provide high data rate, real-time and energy-efficient solutions for a secure and dependable offshore oil and gas structures.

Over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with water. The underwater world, which comprises the sea, rivers, lakes and reservoirs, is rich in natural resources. Through undersea exploration, oilfields and valuable minerals can be detected and extracted, leading to optimal use of natural resources, including energy. To exploit such resources in deep waters (over 3km), huge floating structures, e.g., exploratory vessels, deployed for offshore oil drilling are anchored via mooring cables to the seabed with multiple anchors. Mooring systems are attractive for such applications due to their low operation costs compared to dynamic positioning of the vessels. However, the trend to exploit oil resources in deeper waters brings about a new set of challenges. Natural disasters, deliberate malicious attacks of terrorism, mismanagement, negligence etc can result in malfunctions and failures, which may have serious business, safety and environmental implications.

For example, during hurricanes Ivan, Katrina and Rita, sixteen deepwater mobile offshore drilling units went adrift. Such drifts can potentially damage other critical elements of the offshore oil and gas infrastructure, e.g., colliding with floating or fixed production systems and transportation hubs, posing a safety hazard. Human negligence such as the failure to monitor load conditions in the mooring cables, corrosion, stress, fatigue, anchor locations and angles can also cause anchor pullout and drift. Dragging anchors and improper actuation of valves can also cause pressurized pipelines to rupture, releasing hydrocarbons into the ocean. This will have severe environmental impact on marine life. In the wake of threats from terror groups, the Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) in India has beefed up security around its highly vulnerable offshore assets on the western coast of India through investing 48 billion USD to put in place a state-of-the-art radar-based surveillance system to detect suspicious crafts near the offshore oil complexes such as Bombay High.

To address the above challenges, we propose the design and development of a cognitive underwater wireless communications system. This will form the technology building blocks for creating, monitoring and managing secure, resilient and always available information infrastructures to make offshore oil and gas structures more secure and dependable.

1. To suggest real application scenarios and requirements and contribute to the project requirements definition

2. To be involved in deployment of proposed communication system for test and validation