MIT scientists envision a way to enable submerged submarines to communicate with airplanes

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. are helping find ways for military aircraft to communicate with submerged submarines. They have created an underwater-to-air communications system called translational acoustic-RF communication (TARF) that seamlessly can convert sonar into radar. The TARF technology turns the water surface from an obstacle into a communication interface by combining sound and radio in an innovative way. It uses an underwater speaker to send data as sound, which vibrates the surface. Sensitive radar aboard overhead aircraft then could pick up these vibrations, and decode them to recover the sound data. The technology still is in its infancy. The team has tested it at depths of 11.5 feet in swimming pools and with circulation currents to mimic some ocean conditions.