Direct Acoustic Versus AUV-Assisted Hybrid Reporting for Subsea Pipeline Monitoring: A Matched End-to-End Evaluation.

Abstract

Subsea pipeline monitoring must deliver urgent alarms quickly while moving much larger inspection records over constrained underwater links. This creates a deployment choice: send all data through a prioritized acoustic network, or collect routine records with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) undertaking a finite collection mission. We compare these complete reporting architectures under identical traffic, geometry, deadlines, available retry choices, and surface infrastructure. A predefined parameter search, independent confirmation and deployment controls test complete measurement recovery under finite storage, communication and vehicle resources. In the reference deployment, direct priority recovered 100% of deadline-eligible raw measurement windows on time, compared with 0.84% for the selected hybrid deployment. Lower submerged-equipment energy in the hybrid case coincided with extensive retained data and greater total mission energy. The result applies to the tested mission and controllers. It identifies collection opportunities, final transfer and mission availability as joint constraints that must be satisfied before local energy reductions can support a deployment decision.