A new rescue signal

Sending large amounts of data is no longer a problem, even via a smartphone. Under water, it’s a different matter - radio waves like Wi-Fi can only reach a few centimeters below the surface. A team led by Dominik Schott from the Department of Microsystems Engineering at the University of Freiburg is working on a solution. Using sound waves, the researchers can transmit data from a submarine to a buoy on the surface, which relays the signal via radio waves. With a new and inexpensive security chip, the team’s goal is to enable electronic searches for people and objects under water. In this way, an emergency signal could be transmitted about as easily as a video via message services.

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