Researchers work to create “underwater Wi-Fi” for internet under the sea

Vunderkind

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The first test for the “underwater Wi-Fi” has begun by researchers who are testing the concept of “deep-sea internet” in a lake, BBC reports.

The team of researchers from the University of Buffalo in New York believes this technology can serve as a tsunami sentry if effectively developed.

So, how does this work? Wi-Fi uses radio waves, which is basically redundant for under-water connectivity. These researchers have worked around that minor difficulty by riding their network technology on sound waves.

The classic proof of the efficacy of sound waves can be seen as is the case of dolphins and whales, using sonar for their communication needs.

So – is this a flash of brilliance? According to BBC, not really; underwater wireless communication has always been possible (at least for a while before now), but the problem had been getting separate systems used by different organizations to communicate with each other. For example, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses acoustic waves to send the data collected from tsunami sensors on the sea floors to the surface.

Infrastructural differences, however, rendered this a very slow process of sharing information.
 
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