Electrical engineering

Physics

Geology

Aerospace engineering

Energy (signal processing)

Wireless

Oceanography

Engineering

Underwater acoustic communication

Marine engineering

Power (physics)

Renewable energy

Range (aeronautics)

Computer science

Marine energy

Quantum mechanics

Environmental science

Underwater acoustics

Telecommunications

Underwater

iScience

The autonomous underwater vehicle has widespread applications in marine resource exploration, seabed search and rescue, underwater military reconnaissance, and marine environmental monitoring. Owing to the limited battery capacity, autonomous underwater vehicles usually only operate for several hours or days at a time. This article presents an extended-range wave-powered autonomous underwater vehicle (WPAUV) for underwater wireless sensor networks. Through theoretical analysis, simulation, dry and field experiments, the power generation performance of the extended-range WPAUV was evaluated. Under different wave amplitudes and wave frequencies, the mechanical efficiency of the extended-range WPAUV ranges from 20.41% to 81.56%. The average efficiency is 45.35%. In the field experiments, under calm ocean conditions, the maximum instantaneous power can reach 67.74W with an average of 10.18W. This high performance manifests that the extended-range WPAUV can effectively scavenge wave energy and converts it into electrical energy for expanding the cruising mileage.

An extended-range wave-powered autonomous underwater vehicle applied to underwater wireless sensor networks