Development and Evaluation of Simultaneous Wireless Transmission of Power and Data for Oceanographic Devices

Research in oceanography requires data acquisition and logging devices in waterproof enclosures. The limited battery life and data storage capacity of these devices only allow short-term tests. Wireless Power Transfer has regained research interest due to the increase of users of mobile electronic devices in recent years. Thus, we propose the use of Wireless Power Transfer for data loggers used for underwater applications. Magnetic-field resonant coupling is used for power transfer. Amplitude and load modulation is used for bidirectional data transfer. On-site charging will allow (1) continuous and long-term tests and deployments, (2) simpler and cost-effective waterproofing for underwater data loggers. The power transfer, efficiency, effective communication distance, and bit error rate of the developed system is tested in both air and water and show promising results.