An analytical study on routing techniques for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UWASNs)

Abstract

Almost two-third of earth covered by water. However, human knowledge about underwater is very negligible in comparison to land. The high pressure and harsh environment of underwater have been converted it to unknown and mysterious area for human. There are various methods to collect data from deep sea. However, in the recent years, researcher was interested to use of WSNs (Wireless Sensor Networks) in underwater. The condition in this environment is so different compare to air and acoustic is used for communication. Therefore, it has new challenges such as high path loss, high prone to error, more energy consumption, high propagation delay, low bandwidth, and etc. Also, continuous movement of nodes and three-dimensional nature of underwater cause to it be too different from terrestrial networks. One of the main issues in UWASNs is routing. Many routing solutions were proposed for terrestrial WSNs. However, because of the different conditions between terrestrial WSNs and UWASNs, most of these protocols are not suitable for UWASNs. Therefore, designing new algorithms for UWASNs were started about seven years ago. In this paper, fundamental differences between terrestrial WSNs and UWASNs are expressed. Moreover, problems of use of terrestrial WSNs routing protocols in underwater are discussed. In addition, routing protocols in UWASNs are classified in different categories and at least an example protocol also will be described for each category. Eventually, these protocols are compared with each other base on characteristics and simulation conditions.