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Staff Profile

Dr Benjamin Sherlock

Research Associate

  • Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 5286
  • Personal Website: https://bensherlock.co.uk
  • Address: SEA Lab,
    School of Engineering,
    Merz Court,
    Newcastle University,
    Newcastle upon Tyne,
    NE1 7RU
Background

Dr. Benjamin Sherlock is a Research Associate in the SEAlab team (School of Engineering) and engineer with 20 years experience in electronics and software engineering covering a wide range of research and development projects. As part of his recent PhD research (2013-2017), he developed bio-friendly acoustic waveforms to minimise the impact on marine mammals whilst still providing low-power and robust communications in the underwater channel. These waveforms were developed further and incorporated in the recent work on the USMART (EP/P017975/1) acoustic modem. He contributed to the design of this modem technology which has since resulted in commercialisation of the technology. He was part of the SONAR team that won the Moonshot Award in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE in 2019.

Areas of Expertise

Underwater Acoustic Communications, Signal Processing, and Embedded Systems.

Active Projects

Commercial research and development projects improving the performance of commercially available underwater modem technology.

Participating in the EU Horizons MONUSEN (MONTENEGRIN CENTER FOR UNDERWATER SENSOR NETWORKS) project in knowledge and technology transfer covering underwater acoustic communications http://www.monusen.ucg.ac.me/ https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101060395

Research and development of offshore communications infrastructure and modems on the EPSRC COUSIN project. https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/V009583/1

Contributed to the development of the Phorcys Open Media Layer specification (POMLSv0). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9905673

Research and Development of NM3 acoustic modems - Low cost, low power underwater acoustic modems for distributed sensor networks and positioning applications. Digital signal processing, ARM microcontrollers, analogue and digital electronics design and manufacture, C and assembler software engineering. https://research.ncl.ac.uk/usmart/ The technology has been commercialised and is available as off-the-shelf acoustic modems: https://succorfish.com/products/delphis/

Python drivers and examples for NM3 modems can be found at: https://github.com/bensherlock/nm3-python-driver

Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE TEAM Tao - Part of the Newcastle University SEA Lab team, designing and producing the Sonar system that is integral to the subsea automated vehicles. FPGA and VHDL with digital signal processing, electronics design, PC based C/CPP software engineering. https://www.xprize.org/prizes/ocean-discovery/teams/team_tao 

Design of electronics, systems, and software for the SEALab Acoustic Network Gateway Buoy (ANGY). Live streaming hydrophones to the ANGY YouTube Channel (mainly during the lighter months as ANGY is solar powered, but previous recordings are archived on youtube): https://www.youtube.com/angy-sealab . The live stream also featured in the REVEIL2020 24HR Dawn Chorus Stream for International Dawn Chorus 2020.

Selected recordings from ANGY also contributed to an immersive soundscape for World Oceans Day 2020: https://daviddelahaye.co.uk/world-oceans-day-2020/

Academic Qualifications

MEng (Hons) Microelectronics and Software Engineering, Newcastle University, 2003.

PhD Electronic Engineering, Newcastle University, 2018. Thesis title: "Spread-Spectrum Techniques for Environmentally-Friendly Underwater Acoustic Communications".


Research


Full publication listings can be found on Google Scholar. 


Publications