Impact of Marine Environment and Seawater Bubbles on Underwater RF Communications at 1 MHz, 100 MHz, and 1 GHz

Abstract

The underwater area is increasingly important for getting resources, understanding ecology, and maintaining national safety. Talking between underwater vehicles and flying platforms is key to achieving these goals. But the sea environment, with things like salinity, conductivity, and roughness, coupled with bubbles from wind, living things, and human stuff, really messes up how radio frequency (RF) signals travel. These bubbles change how seawater works for signals, causing them to lose strength, scatter around, or bend, which makes it harder for underwater-to-air communication systems to work well. This paper looks at how bubbles affect RF communication with Monte Carlo simulations, looking into bubble size groups, the count of bubbles, and environmental issues such as water depth and wind speed. The study also quantified scattering and absorption losses caused by bubbles, while proposing mitigation strategies to address these impairments. The results show difficulties along with possible answers for making RF communication better in bubbly sea areas, stressing that using flexible methods can help make signal trustworthiness better.