Overview
ISO/IEC 30143:2020 - "Information technology - Underwater acoustic sensor network (UWASN) - Application profiles" provides guidance for designing and developing IoT applications that operate in underwater environments. The standard focuses on application profiles for UWASN use cases such as fish farming, environmental monitoring, harbour security, and other maritime sensing and surveillance systems. It defines the components, modelling techniques, communication relationships, design steps and implementation guidelines needed to plan, build and maintain underwater acoustic sensor networks.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Design process and criteria: step‑by‑step guidance for creating UWASN application profiles, including user, general, functional and constrained requirements.
- Requirements breakdown:
- User requirements and system objectives.
- General and functional requirements for sensing, data collection and control.
- Constrained requirements covering connectivity, gateways (UWA‑GW, UWA‑DTN‑GW), housings, fouling mitigation, node deployment and battery considerations.
- Modelling techniques: standard recommends UML‑style models to capture requirements and interactions:
- Use case models to describe actors and system boundaries.
- Sequence diagrams for message flows and timing between nodes and gateways.
- Class diagrams for structural definitions of components and data models.
- Implementation guidance: layered design approach, specific UWASN architecture and a practical framework covering user interface, system computation units, surface devices and sensor nodes.
- Maintenance and operations: specialized maintenance practices and monitoring factors to keep underwater networks reliable.
- Informative examples: Annex A offers a worked example for a fish farming application profile.
Applications and practical value
ISO/IEC 30143 is directly applicable to real‑world underwater IoT projects where acoustic communication and submerged sensing are required:
- Aquaculture / fish farming: remote water quality, feeding and health monitoring.
- Environmental monitoring: pollution detection, marine biology surveys and climate data collection.
- Harbour and coastal security: intrusion detection, pipeline leakage and asset monitoring.
- Research & resource exploration: oceanographic data collection and seabed monitoring.
Practical benefits include improved interoperability, repeatable design practices, clearer system modelling for procurement and development, and reduced technical risk when deploying UWASN solutions.
Who should use this standard
- System architects and solution designers for underwater IoT
- Marine and acoustic engineers
- Aquaculture operators and environmental agencies
- Device manufacturers, integrators and software developers
- Standards bodies and certification organizations
Related standards
- Produced by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 41 (Internet of Things and related technologies). For broader IoT context, consult related ISO/IEC IoT standards (for example the ISO/IEC 30140 family referenced in the introduction).