Very-Low-Frequency Magnetoelectric Antennas for Portable Underwater Communication: Theory and Experiment

Finding an efficient way for underwater communication with a portable antenna at very low frequency (VLF 3–30 kHz) is challenging since the conventional electrical antennas require the size to be larger than 1/10 of the wavelength. Recently, acoustically driven antennas were proposed to realize portable VLF communication in air but lack the demonstration in a lossy environment. Here, we reported the first VLF underwater communication system based on a pair of acoustically actuated magnetoelectric (ME) antennas with small size of 10 cm in length. A theoretical analysis of reflection and radiation performance of the ME antenna was conducted, where the electromechanical resonance (EMR) frequency and effective magnetic dipole moment were estimated, and a near-field coupling model of a pair of ME antennas was further established. The results of theoretical predictions and finite element model (FEM) simulations were then compared with experimental measurements and their differences were discussed. A prototype of underwater communication system based on the ME antenna pair was finally presented, where a binary digital modulation with a bit rate of 100 b/s has been demonstrated, confirming the feasibility of ME antennas for portable underwater communication.