Internet under the sea

Aqua-Fi is a Wi-Fi system for watery environments where radios typically struggle. Communicating underwater has always been a hassle. Radio transmissions, the ubiquitous wireless standard above the waves, can’t transmit very far before being entirely absorbed by the water. Acoustic transmissions (think sonar) are the preferred choice underwater, but they suffer from very low data rates. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just have Internet under the sea?

Researchers use lasers to bring the Internet under the sea


Internet under the sea

The Aqua-Fi system uses a Wi-Fi connection to wirelessly connect a device to a Raspberry Pi,which converts the signal into a laser to be beamed to a relay on the water’s surface.

How will Internet under the sea work?

Waterproofed smartphones can transmit data underwater. The researchers used a regular old Wi-Fi signal to connect that device to an underwater “modem.” Specifically, they used a Raspberry Pi to function as that modem. The Raspberry Pi converted the wireless signal to an optical signal. In this case, a laser that was beamed to receiver attached to a surface buoy. Established communications techniques were used to send the signal to an orbiting satellite. For the underwater device to receive data, the process is simply reversed.

Aqua-Fi stems from work that the KAUST researchers did back in 2017. The researchers used a blue laser to transmit a 1.2-gigabit file underwater. But that wasn’t interesting enough, according to Basem Shihada, an associate professor of computer science at KAUST and one of the researchers on the Aqua-Fi project. “Who cares about submitting just a file?” he says. “Let’s do something with a bit more life.”

The light bulb moment

It was that thinking that spurred the team to start looking at bi-directional communications. With the ultimate goal of building a system that can transfer high-resolution video. Internet under the sea could be a possibility.




Testing the system

Two students at KAUST talk over Skype using Aqua-Fi. Each phone is connected to an underwater Raspberry Pi on each end of the black box. A green laser is reflected down the length of the box several times to create a distance of 20m.

What are the limitations?


What options are available?



Do we need the Internet under the sea?

You might still be asking yourself at this point why anyone even needs the Internet underwater? First, there’s plenty of need in underwater conservation for remote monitoring of sea life and coral reefs, for example. High definition video collected and transmitted by wireless undersea cameras can be immensely helpful to conservationists.

However, it’s also helpful to the high-tech world. Companies like Microsoft are exploring the possibility of placing data centres offshore and underwater. Placing data centres on the ocean floor can perhaps save money both on cooling the equipment as well as energy costs. If the kinetic energy of the waves can be harvested and converted to electricity. Finally, if there are data centres underwater, the Internet will need to be there too.

How can we connect you?

We are sorry to report that we are unable to help with the progress of launching Internet under the sea. However, our land-based clients are happy with our service and a support team that is not wet behind the ears! Contact the LIS Help Desk to find out more about super-fast broadband. Unlimited broadband packages are available with speeds up to 1,000mb download and upload. If that’s not fast enough we can join several lines together and the sky is the limit… yes, we ran out of sea puns!

Our experienced team can also help you with any other IT enquiries, security issues and telecoms.


#UnderTheSea #UnderwaterWiFi #WithCoolLasers
