Fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles including a novel communication system

A group (or swarm) of two or more autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), each AUV comprising:

• a. a plurality of sensors enclosed within a housing of the AUV;
• and
• b. a generative learning system comprising at least one processor and at least one memory configured to implement a deployed learning network model, the deployed learning network model generated from a training network, wherein the training network is tuned using features extracted from a set of data received from the one or more sensors in the group of submersible underwater vehicles, and wherein data associated with each of the one or more sensors indicates a navigation model, the at least one processor configured to at least:
• i. automatically process a first set of data using the deployed learning network model to generate a navigation trajectory;
• ii. compute the navigation trajectory metric associated with the set of data using the deployed learning network model by leveraging the features and associated target value for the navigation trajectory network to determine the associated navigation trajectory for the group of submersible underwater vehicles;
• and wherein the AUVs further comprise a linked communication system wherein depending on maritime conditions the swarm of AUVs communicates with one another and with a command-and-control system (C2) using a combination of acoustic, RF, and optical communication systems,
• c. wherein the optical communication system comprises:
• one or more of a photon-counting detector, a boundary detector operably coupled to the photon-counting detector, at least one alignment block operably coupled to the boundary detector, and a rate decision block operably coupled to the alignment blocks, wherein the photon-counting detector transduces an optical signal with a variable data rate into a digital signal including a symbol having a data period and a guard period, wherein he boundary detector senses a boundary (e.g., a rising or falling edge) of the digital signal and indicates a photon arrival at the photon-counting detector, wherein the alignment block estimates a number of photons detected by the photon-counting detector during the guard period at each of a plurality of predetermined data rates based on the boundary of the digital symbol, and the rate decision block estimates the variable data rate of the optical signal based on the number of photons detected by the photon-counting detector during the guard period at each of the plurality of predetermined data rates.