SUNRISE: Building the Internet of Underwater Things

Video-report of Euronews on the SUNRISE project

Creating the Internet of Underwater Things

SUNRISE Concept

We must learn to both sustainably exploit and protect our vast oceans, provider of oxygen, food, hydrocarbons and other resources. A solution lies in sensing and interacting through an Internet of Things, with distributed networks of intelligent sensors and actuators. Unfortunately, we currently lack a marine Internet, crucial to achieve distributed, coordinated and adaptive control, due to the rapid absorption of light and radio waves in seawater.

The SUNRISE objectives are to develop:

• Five federated underwater communication networks, based on pilot infrastructure already designed, built and deployed by consortium partners, in diverse environments (Mediterranean, Ocean, Black Sea, Lakes, Canals), web-accessible and interfaced with existing FIRE facilities to experiment with Future Internet technologies.
• A software-defined open-architecture modem and protocol stack that will empower open collaborative developments.
• Standard platforms for simulation, emulation and replay testing to estimate underwater communication networks at a fraction of time, cost, complexity of current at-sea experiments, validated by tests conducted on the SUNRISE networks over a variety of applications and environments.
• A user-friendly interface for diverse users to interact with SUNRISE systems to conduct trials and benefit from databases of underwater Internet of Things performance data gathered over long periods from the SUNRISE infrastructure.

SUNRISE directly addresses FIRE objectives by combining technology with novel paradigms in new, open experimental facilities, integrating physical systems with software development into the Internet of Underwater Things. It is the first project that develops this concept, based on joint research performed in this directions by University of Rome La Sapienza, CMRE, and some of the other partners, in the last few years. SUNRISE will also provide a way to select Internet of Underwater Things standards based on objective measures of performance, strengthening in its facilities as more sites are added in the future as a result of the two envisioned open calls.

Video of SUNRISE demo @ ICT 2013

Visitors at SUNRISE project booth in ICT 2013 in Vilnius (Lithuania)