Abstract
The capability of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) or Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to communicate with underwater sensor nodes or a docking station, for the exchange or transfer of data gathered during a survey mission, requires an high-speed short-range communication link. This is important because of the global attention to the underwater communication applications. To this end, underwater antennas will play a significant role in ensuring good data rates and propagation distances for these applications. In this paper, the performance of three antennas, specifically, loop, dipole and J-pole is assessed through simulation for usage in fresh and sea water operating in the High Frequency (HF) band. The antennas were designed in FEKO, an electromagnetic simulation software and their performance is assessed in terms of bandwidth and directivity. The results obtained shows that the J-pole antenna has significant advantages in term of the measured parameters over the other antennas. Experimental results of the reflection coefficient of the J-pole antenna in fresh water are given that agree well with the simulation results. © 2017 IEEE.

Abstract
INESC TEC is strongly committed to become a center of excellence in maritime technology and, in particular, deep sea technology. The STRONGMAR project aims at creating solid and productive links in the global field of marine science and technology between INESC TEC and established leading research European institutions, capable of enhancing the scientific and technological capacity of INESC TEC and linked institutions, helping raising its staff's research profile and its recognition as a European maritime research center of excellence. The STRONGMAR project seeks complementarity to the TEC4SEA research infrastructure: on the one hand, TEC4SEA promotes the establishment of a unique infrastructure of research and technological development, and on the other, the STRONGMAR project intends to develop the scientific expertise of the research team of INESC TEC.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper focuses on the design of high quality spiral resonators for maximising wireless power transfer efficiency between an AUV and an underwater docking station. By using 3D electromagnetic simulations and numerical analysis, the relevant parameters for quality factor computation are extracted. The impact of different variables on a spiral resonator's quality factor is assessed, allowing to conclude on the optimum design parameters to achieve optimum efficiency on the power transmission through magnetic coupling. This work will contribute to enable the development future AUV wireless charging systems, which will allow for an improvement of AUV's range and endurance while ensuring lower operational costs. © 2016 IEEE.

Abstract
In this paper the absorption by the human body of electromagnetic (EM) radiation generated by a Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) from a modern mobile phone is investigated through the evaluation of the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) in head, brain and hand regions using Sim4Life (S4L) and a realistic anatomical model. Several scenarios were evaluated, by varying the distance between the antenna and the head, the feeder position and the orientation of the antenna. The effect of the presence of the hand was also studied and, finally, different communication bands were considered. The main results show that the presence of the hand is determinant to reduce SAR on head and brain, while bottom orientations of the antenna reduce the SAR on the brain, but increase the SAR in other tissues.

Abstract
Digitized radio-over-fiber (D-RoF) transport schemes are being pointed as viable alternative solutions to their analog counterparts, in order to avoid distortion/dynamic range problems. Here we propose a novel D-RoF architecture that takes advantage of a bandpass sigma-delta modulator at the transmitter which subsequently permits the usage of a simpler/cheaper base station that avoids the employment of a digital to analog converter. The proposed architecture exploits the properties of the digital signal to enable the extraction of an higher carrier frequency through the employment of a bandpass filter. Furthermore, we present a comprehensive analysis regarding the impact of a low-cost electro-optic modulation on the quality of received demodulated signal. Finally, a comparison performance analysis between the conventional D-RoF and the proposed architecture is presented. We conclude that although the proposed architecture performs similarly to conventional D-RoF schemes, it is more competitive for either upgrading installed systems as well as for new deployments. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America