Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation Shenyang, China, June 2012

Modeling and Simulation of Magnetic Induction Wireless Communication for a Deepwater Mooring System
Zhen Zhao, Member, IEEE Shuzhi Sam Ge, Fellow, IEEE and Wei He Yoo Sang Choo
Department of Electrical Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science Department of Civil Engineering and Computer Engineering and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and and the Centre for Offshore National University of Singapore Technology of China, Chengdu 611813, China Research and Engineering 117576, Singapore Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering National University of Singapore zhenzhao0523@gmail.com National University of Singapore, 117576, Singapore 117576, Singapore samge@nus.edu.sg, hewei.ac@gmail.com ceecys@nus.edu.sg

Abstract Subsea is a challenging environment for wireless communication due to that the propagation medium is no longer air, but different densities of water, soil in the seabed, iceberg, and rock. The most popular underwater wireless communication technique using acoustic wave does not work well for that the transmission speeds show different characteristics in the underwater environment. In this paper, the principle for magnetic wireless communication is analyzed. Meanwhile, transmission loss between tranceivers is investigated based on the analysis. The simulation model of the MI wireless communication is built based on the theoretical analysis. The simulation result shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed magnetic induction wireless communication model. Index Terms Magnetic induction, wireless communication, modeling and simulation.

I. I NTRODUCTION Recent advances of underwater wireless communication have enabled many scientic, environmental, commercial, safety, and military applications in underwater environment, such as offshore exploration, pollution and environmental monitoring, marine archaeology [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], and so on. Compared with wireline communication, wireless communication has lower cost [9], which is easier to be deployed and more reliable for that the wirelines may be easier to be destroyed by shes, rocks, or other reasons. Therefore, underwater wireless communication has attracted more and more attentions during the past few years. However, underwater environment is a challenging environment for wireless communication for that the propagation medium is no longer air, but soil, rock, iceberg, water with different densities, in which the well established terrestrial wireless communication techniques do not work well, e.g. radio frequency. In the past three decades, acoustic wireless communication is the most widely used technique in underwater wireless communication for its long distance communication ability [3], [10], [11]. However, it suffers from several major disadvantages, such as the transmission speed is greatly affected

by the temperature gradients and air bubbles in the water, the performance is limited by the background noises as well as noises from some underwater equipments [12]. Optical wireless communication, which has favor in pointto-point communication over a range of a few kilometers in terrestrial communication, is limited to very short range because of the severe absorption and scattering in underwater environment [13]. More seriously, the optical wireless communication may not perform signal transmission when soil or rock is hindered in its transmission path. Radio frequency wireless communication, which uses electromagnetic waves to transmit signal, is the most popular wireless communication technique in terrestrial communication. However, this conventional radio frequency does not work in the underwater environment due to high path loss, dynamic channel condition, large antenna size, and etc. [13], [14]. For the above three wireless communication techniques, they all can not be used or show poor performance when the sensors are deployed in seabed. Considering that magnetic induction (MI) is immune to scattering and reection, and can penetrate water, ice, soil and rock [15], it is a promising alternative physical layer technique for underwater wireless communication. MI underwater and underground wireless communication has attracted lots of attentions in the past decades. In this paper, we build a model for the MI wireless communication. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The principle of magnetic induction wireless communication in underwater environment is depicted in Section II. Simulations are provided to illustrate the performance of the MI wireless communication in Section III. The conclusion is drawn in Section IV. II. MI W IRELESS C OMMUNICATION A. MI Channel In the MI wireless communication, signal transmission and reception are actually realized by two coils of wire [14], as

978-1-4673-2237-9/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

373

Transmission coil

Reception coil
Nr

at Nt
ar

Magnetic flux
d

transmission coil in Fig. 2 is given by [17] 2 2 Nt ia2 t (2at + 2r + at r sin ) cos B = r 5 2 4 2 (a 2 t + r + 2at r sin ) 2 2 2 Nt iat (2at r + at r sin ) sin B = 5 2 4 2 (a2 t + r + 2at r sin ) B = 0

(2)

Fig. 1.

Illustration of MI wireless communication.

y z

P d

z i
at

x

where Br , B , B are the magnetic eld intensity along the directions r, , of the spherical coordinate system, respectively; is the permeability of the medium with unit H/m; r is the distance from the center of the transmission coil to the position P with unit m. Suppose that r at , i.e. the transmission range is greatly larger than the size of the transmission coil, then Nt ia2 t 2 cos Br = 4 r3 2 Nt iat sin (3) B = 3 4 r B = 0 When the reception coil is placed at position P where the magnetic eld intensity is varying with time, the electromotive force (EMF) induced in the reception coil can be expressed as [15] according to Faradays law of electromagnetic induction d EM F (t) = Nr (4) dt where is the magnetic ux encircled by the reception coil as shown in Fig. 3. The negative sign at the right hand of Eq. (4) indicates that the induced current in the reception coil is opposite to the variation of the magnetic ux density [17]. The magnetic ux density passed through the reception coil depends on the position and orientation of the reception coil. Since B identically equals to 0, it can be assumed that position P is always perpendicular to the xz plane [17]. The orientation of the reception coil at position P can be represented by c measured from ZL axis and c measured from XL axis as in Fig. 4, where XL , YL , ZL represents the local coordinate system of the reception coil at position P. BSN , the magnetic eld intensity in the direction SN can be calculated as Eq. (6). Then, the magnetic ux density passed through the reception coil is given as =BSN Ar =a2 r B SN =a2 r (cos c (Br cos B sin ) + sin c cos c (Br sin + B cos )) (1) where Ar is the area of the reception coil. (5)

Fig. 2. Lines of a magnetic eld of a transmission coil and a point P located at distance r from the transmission coil.

shown in Fig. 1. In Fig. 1, at and ar are the radii of the transmission and reception coil, respectively; Nt and Nr are the number of turns of the two coils, respectively; r is the distance in the centers between these two coils; and is the angle between the axes of these two coils. Suppose that the current in the transmission coil is a sinusoidal current i(t) = Im sin(t + 0 ), where Im is the magnitude of the current, 0 is the initial phase, is the angle frequency of this current, t represents time. According to the Amperes right hand screw rule, a shifty magnetic eld will be generated around the transmission coil, as shown in Fig. 1. This shifty magnetic eld will induce a shifty electromotive force (EMF) or a shifty current in the reception coil. In this way, the wireless communication has been accomplished. To calculate the magnetic eld strength around the transmission coil, the coil is supposed to be on the xy plane with its center at (0, 0, 0). If the center of the coil is not placed at (0, 0, 0), a simple transformation can be used as Eq. (1) [16]. If the coil is not placed on the xy plane, a 3D transformation matrix consisting of a translational and a rotational matrix can be used [16]. Thus the supposition is reasonable. x = x x0 y = y y0 z = z z0

The magnetic eld at position P with distance r from the

374

 SN SN cos c sin c B SN B SN

=1 1 sin c 2 sin c 2 = SN cos = cos cos c cos c = = SN cos sin c cos c sin c cos c = = SN cos = Br cos(c ) + B cos(/2 (c )) cos c (Br cos B sin ) + sin c cos c (Br sin + B cos ) = cos = BSN cos = cos c (Br cos B sin ) + sin c (Br sin + B cos ) =

(6)

zL

Br SN

P
yL

xL

at
i x

From Eq. (8), it can be seen that EM F is a function of r, , c , c (position and orientation of the reception coil) and i (the current in the transmission coil), which also means that the induced EMF will be greatly inuenced by the angular frequency of the sinusoidal current in the transmission coil. In this way, the signal can be modulated and demodulated between the MI transmission and reception transceivers to realize signal transmission. B. Path loss analysis For every communication technology, it is inevitable that there exists path loss in the communication channel, which also illustrates that the signal can not be transmitted for innite distance. In this section, the path loss of MI channel is analyzed based on the principle of MI wireless communication. The path loss in this paper is dened as follow [18] P LM I = 10 lg Pr Pt (9)

Fig. 3.

Magnetic ux density passed through the reception coil.

Substitute Br and B into Eq. (5), becomes =

2 Nt a2 t ar i (cos c (3 cos 2 + 1) + 3 sin c cos c sin 2) 8r3 (7) Substitute into Eq. (4), then

EM F (r, , c , c , i, t) (8) k di = 3 (cos c (3 cos 2 + 1) + 3 sin c cos c sin 2) r dt 2 where k = Nr Nt a2 t ar /8.

zL Br

where Pt and Pr are the transmitting power and receiving power, respectively; P LM I represents the path loss of the MI wireless communication with dB as its unit. From the above equation, it can be found that Pt and Pr must be calculated to deduce the path loss. In the following context, detailed Pt and Pr will be given.
Rt

M
Lt Lr

Rr ZL
ir

' c

BS '

c
P

AC

c
BS N
xL

i
Zt

Zr

d
yL

AC

Z t'
i

EMF
' Zr

ZL

ir

at
y

Fig. 5.

Equivalent circuit.

Fig. 4.

Coil at position P with the orientation pointed by unit vector SN .

According to the mechanism of MI wireless communication, the MI transceiver in Fig. 1 can be modeled as

375

a transformer circuit as shown in Fig. 5, where Lt and Lr are the self inductions of the transmitter and receiver coils, respectively; Rt and Rr are the resistances of the two coils; AC is the battery of the transmitter coil; ZL is the load impedance in the receiver; M is the mutual induction coefcient of the two coils; Zt and Zr are the self impedances of the two coils; Zt and Zr are the impedances inuenced by the mutual induction between the two coils; EM F is the electromotive force induced in the receiver coil [18]. All these parameters can be calculated as follow Rt = Nt 2at R0 R r = Nr 2ar R0 Zt = Rt + jLt Zr = Rr + jLr (10) 2 M 2 Zt = Rr + jLr + ZL 2 M 2 Zr = Rt + jLt The mutual induction M can be deduced by the magnetic potential of the magnetic coils M = EM F = = EM F
di dt

physical parameters of the two coils are determined. Suppose that Nr = Nt = 5, at = ar = 0.15m, lt = lr = 0.1m, R0 = 0.01/m, = 4 107 H/m, = 300M Hz , then the path loss can be simplied as P LM I 26.15 + 120 lg r 20 lg p (16)

where p = cos c (3 cos 2 + 1) + 3 sin c cos c sin 2 is the relative position of the reception coil to the transmission coil. Eq. (16) shows that the path loss will increased with longer distance between the transmission coil and the reception coil. At the meantime, the path loss is inuenced by the relative position between the two coils. III. S IMULATION RESULT In this section, we use Matlab software to build a simulation model to evaluate performance of the MI wireless communication. Fig. 6 illustrates a signal or data that are propagated in a wireless communication system. The signal or data obtained from some sensors rstly are modulated by amplitude modulator (AM), or frequency modulator (FM), or phase modulator (PM). The modulated data then propagates through any propagation medium, such as air, soil, seawater, and so on. This process is often simulated as some types of channel. Some noise is also added in this propagation process. Thirdly, the received data should be demodulated to restore the original data. At last, the demodulated data is ltered. In the simulation, the parameters are set as depicted in Table I. The modulator and demodulator used in this paper are both Frequency Modulation (FM).
Generate random data Addition of white noise Demodulating

t i (11)

k [cos c (2 cos 2 + 1) + 2 sin c cos c sin 2] r3 The self-inductance of the two coils are Lt = Nt2 a2 t lt Lr =
2 Nr a2 r lr

(12) (13)
Modulating

where lt and lr are the lengths of the two coils. In the equivalent circuit, the power consumed in the transmitter coil and the receiver coil can be dened as 2 P = Re{ EM F ZL } r (Zr + Zr + ZL )2 (14) P = Re{i2 (Z + Z )}
t t t

Simulate propagation medium

Simulate filtering at MI receiver

Fig. 6.

Flow diagram for the MI wireless communication system.

Substitute Eqs. (10), (11), (12), (13), (14) into (9), the path loss becomes 2 2 M 2 M 2 R 256r 6 (Rr + 2 2 t ) 2 R t + Lt P LM I = 10 lg 2M2R 2 M 2 (2Rr + 2 2 t ) R t + L2 R + t t (2R + 2 M 2 Rt )2 (2L 2 M 2 Lt )2
r

(15) From Eq. (15), it can be seen that the path loss of MI wireless communication is not only dependent on the distance between the transmitter coil and the reception coil, but also dependent on the relative position of these two coil, when the

2 + 2 L2 Rt t

2 2 R2 t + Lt

Firstly, we suppose that there is no noise in the MI propagation process. Fig. 7 shows the output signal after propagation in the seawater using MI technique, which is also the EMF inducted in the receive coil. Form Fig. 9, it can be seen that the EMF in the receive coil is also changed followed by the modulated signal inspired in the transmit coil. Furthermore, it can be seen that the amplitudes of the EMF change with time. The reason is that FM modulator is used here, which makes the angle frequency of the modulated signal change with the input signal. From Eq. (7), the amplitudes will show different values when the inspired current in the transmit coil shows different angle frequencies. Fig. 8 is the demodulated signal. Fig. 9 shows the comparison between the transmitted signal and the received signal after

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TABLE I S IMULATION PARAMETERS

Notation Nt Nr at ar r 0 t Ts

Description Magnetic permeability of sea water (H/m) Turns of transmitter coil Turns of receiver coil Radius of transmitter coil (m) Radius of receiver coil (m) Distance from the center of the transmission coil to the center of the receive coil (m) Angle between the transmission coil and the receive coil (rad) Angle frequency of Carrier (rad/s) Initial phase (rad) Simulation time (s) Sample time of zero-order hold module
0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1
0.25

Default value 4 107 20 20 0.1 0.1 100 0 2 300 0 01 1 105

Demodulated signal

0.05
0.2

0
0.15 0.9505 0.951 0.9515 0.952

-0.05

0.2

0.4 t/s

0.6

0.8

Fig. 7.

Output signal from MI channel.

Fig. 8.

Demodulated signal.

ltering. From Fig. 9, it can be seen that the received signal is consistent with the transmitted signal. Then, we add a white Gaussian noise into the MI channel. Fig. 10 shows the comparison between transmitted signal and received signal with additive Gaussian noise in the MI channel. From Fig. 10(a), it can be seen that the received signal is also consistent with the transmitted signal. While in Fig. 10(b), the received signal deviates a lot from the transmitted signal. This is because that the noise is considerable with the inducted EMF. In short, the MI wireless communication is susceptible to outside noise under this condition. Fig. 11 shows the path loss of the MI wireless communication in dB versus the distance between the transmission coil and the reception coil. The parameters are set as above. From Fig. 11, it can be seen that the path loss dramatically increases as the distance increases. However, when the distance increases to a certain high extent, the path loss increases much slowly. The reason is that when the distance is high, the variation of the magnetic ux seized by the reception coil

6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1 Transmitted signal Received signal

signal

0.2

0.4 t/s

0.6

0.8

Fig. 9.

Transmitted signal and received signal.

is fairly weak. IV. C ONCLUSION In this article, the simulation model of wireless communication using the magnetic induction technique has been

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7 6 5 4 Signal 3 2 1 0 1

Transmitted signal Received signal

0.2

0.4 t/s

0.6

0.8

(a)
50

Transmitted signal Received signal

40

30 Signal

20

10

10

0.2

0.4 t/s

0.6

0.8

(b)

Fig. 10. Transmitted signal and received signal with additive noise (a) 0 mean and variance of 1 105 ; (b) 0 mean and variance of 1 104 .

550

500

450 Path loss/dB

400

350

300

250

200

20

40 Distance/m

60

80

100

Fig. 11.

Path loss.

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investigated. The feasibility and effectiveness of the MI wireless communication has been successfully veried by simulations. At the mean time, it is convenient to do research on the inuence of parameters on the performance of MI wireless communication in the proposed simulator. R EFERENCES
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