The digital underwater coding standard JANUS has been recognised as a NATO standard, called a STANAG for Standardisation Agreement, by all the NATO Nations, the first time ever a digital underwater communication protocol has been acknowledged at international level.
The NATO STO Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE), based in La Spezia, Italy, began ten years ago to develop a digital underwater coding standard aimed at providing a baseline common denominator for underwater acoustic communications.
JANUS can make military and civilian, NATO and non-NATO devices fully interoperable and has the potential to leverage technological investments, creating a lot more value under the water andmaking all compliant assets (and networks of those) able to cooperate with a robust signalling method.
Tests of JANUS at sea have been conducted in the last years by CMRE on board the NATO Research Vessel Alliance using the innovative CMRE Littoral Ocean Observatory Network (LOON), which facilitates experimentation of marine robots’ mission-base teams by creating a monitoring acoustic network with tripods of underwater communications equipment sitting on the seabed but accessible by users across the world via web.
