In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Yahong Rosa Zheng, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, comments on the communication challenges developers of undersea drones face that are not experienced by those developing aerial drones.
Zheng, whose research interests include underwater cyber-physical systems, real-time embedded systems and signal processing, wireless communications, and wireless sensor networks, says that communicating in real time is much more difficult when transmissions must be sent through water rather than air, because water is a much thicker medium.
"Undersea drones can use a few different methods of communication, such as acoustics, but must be willing to trade off a slower data rate, shorter transmission distance, or both," Zheng explains, according to the article, "The Navy is starting to put up real money for robot submarines."
For that reason, the story reports, these types of drones would need to function more autonomously than aerial drones (allowing them to adjust to weather conditions and steer clear of potential obstacles), as well as have the ability to resurface to speed up transmissions and connect to GPS.
Read the full story on the Los Angeles Times website.
About Yahong Rosa Zheng
Yahong Rosa Zheng, an IEEE Fellow and NSF CAREER Award recipient, joined Lehigh University's Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2018 as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Zheng is also affiliated with the university'sInstitute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure and Energy (I-CPIE), a hub for interdisciplinary research.
She has served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for many IEEE international conferences, including IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference Fall 2008, IEEE GlobeCom, IEEE ICC, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, and IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference. She has also served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2006-2008) and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2008-2016), and is currently Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering (since 2016).
In 2005, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology where she was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and full professor in 2015. She held the Wilkens' Missouri Telecommunications Endowed Professor position for 2017-2018 at Missouri S&T.
