Descriptor: The SFI Smart Ocean Dataset for Acoustic Communications (SODAC)

Underwater acoustic data communication is an enabling technology for operations such as environmental monitoring, exploitation of ocean resources, and autonomous inspection of offshore infrastructure. The only viable technique for subsea telemetry over longer distances is by encoding the information in sound waves. However, the influence of the ocean environment on sound propagation can be harsh, resulting in a poor performance of protocols designed for terrestrial radio-frequency communications. This justifies active research on physical-layer algorithms and network protocols that are robust to acoustic propagation in the oceans. Factors that hamper progress are the lack of accepted standard test channels and hard-to-obtain field data. A majority of academic institutions cannot afford at-sea experimentation, resorting to simplified channel models to test new protocols. To make field data accessible to a wider audience, this article presents a dataset of hydrophone recordings of communication and channel probe waveforms collected in an enclosed fjord environment. The SFI Smart Ocean Dataset for Acoustic Communications (SODAC) allows users to test communication algorithms on in situ data, with opportunities to publish reproducible results that set a realistic benchmark for other researchers.