Self-organizing Fast Routing Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Communications Networks

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) constitute an emerging technology for marine surveillance, natural disaster alert and environmental monitoring. Unlike terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), electromagnetic waves cannot propagate more than few meters in water (high absorption rate). However, acoustic waves can travel long distances in underwater. Therefore, acoustic waves are preferred for underwater communications, but they travel very slow compare to EM waves (typical speed in water is 1500 m/s against 2x10^8 m/s for EM waves). This physical effect makes a high propagation delay and cannot be avoided, but the end-to-end packet delay it can be reduced. Routing delay is one of the major factors in end-to-end packet delay. In reactive routing protocols, when a packet arrives to a node, the node takes some time to select the node to which the data packet would be forwarded. We may reduce the routing delay for time-critical applications by using proactive routing protocols. Other two critical issues in UWSNs are determining the position of the nodes and time synchronization. Wireless sensor nodes need to determine the position of the surrounding nodes to select the next node in the path to reach the sink node. A Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) cannot be used because of the very short underwater range of the GNSS signal. Timestamping to estimate the distance is possible but the limited mobility of the UWSN nodes and variation in the propagation speed of the acoustic waves make the time synchronization a challenging task. For these reasons, terrestrial WSN protocols cannot be readily used for underwater acoustic networks.