The oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface and represent one of the least explored frontiers; yet, the oceans are integral to climate regulation, nutrient production, oil retrieval, and transportation. Also, water systems in general are of vital importance to life on Earth and commerce. For these reasons, there is significant interest in monitoring aquatic environments for scientific, environmental, commercial, safety, and military purposes.

WUWNet is the premier venue for research and development bringing real-time, in-situ sensing and actuation to this aquatic world. The goal of this conference is to bring together researchers and practitioners in areas relevant to underwater networks and systems. Thus, many aspects of the networking protocol stack - from the physical layer to the application layer and the various system issues - will be represented at this conference. The objective is to serve as a forum for presenting state-of-the-art research and development, for exchanging ideas and experiences, and for facilitating interactions and collaborations.

The conference will span three days, including presentations of keynote speeches, plenary talks, technical papers, and posters/demos. The scope of the WUWNet conference covers a broad range of research directions relevant to underwater networks and network-related signal processing, communications, systems, and applications. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

    Underwater network and system architectures
    Efficient underwater communications (including acoustic, optical, RF, and wired, etc.), with techniques from the physical layer to the application layer
    Underwater acoustic modeling and signal processing
    Cooperative underwater communications, including, PHY, MAC, routing, and data transfer, etc.
    Networked underwater robotics and systems, such as localization, navigation, security, communication & coordination, or human operator interaction.
    Coordinated energy harvesting systems and power systems for underwater networks and systems
    Energy-efficient algorithms, and protocol design for underwater networks, as well as signal/image processing and communication systems
    Operating system and middleware support for underwater networks and systems
    Applications that broadly address underwater networks and systems, including coordinated underwater vehicles
    Modeling, simulation, and testbeds for underwater systems and platforms
    Experimental results from underwater networking, signal/image processing and communications field trials
    Application requirements for underwater networks, signal/image processing and communication systems presented by end users
    Interaction and integration of underwater networked systems with terrestrial and aerial networking