Underwater Routing Protocols Research Articles

An Environment-Friendly Multipath Routing Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASN) is a promising technique by facilitating a wide range of aquatic applications. However, routing scheme in UASN is a challenging task because of the characteristics of the nodes mobility, interruption of link, and interference caused by other underwater acoustic systems such as marine mammals. In order to achieve reliable data delivery in UASN, in this work, we present a disjoint multipath disruption-tolerant routing protocol for UASN (ENMR), which incorporates the Hue, Saturation, and Value color space (HSV) model to establish routing paths to greedily forward data packets to sink nodes. ENMR applies the mechanism to maintain the network topology. Simulation results show that, compared with the classic underwater routing protocols named PVBF, ENMR can improve packet delivery ratio and reduce network latency while avoiding introducing additional energy consumption.

Delay Tolerance in Underwater Wireless Communications: A Routing Perspective

Similar to terrestrial networks, underwater wireless networks (UWNs) also aid several critical tasks including coastal surveillance, underwater pollution detection, and other maritime applications. Currently, once underwater sensor nodes are deployed at different levels of the sea, it is nearly impossible or very expensive to reconfigure the hardware, for example, battery. Taking this issue into account, considerable amount of research has been carried out to ensure minimum energy costs and reliable communication between underwater nodes and base stations. As a result, several different network protocols were proposed for UWN, including MAC, PHY, transport, and routing. Recently, a new paradigm was introduced claiming that the intermittent nature of acoustic channel and signal resulted in designing delay tolerant routing schemes for the UWN, known as an underwater delay tolerant network. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey of underwater routing protocols with emphasis on the limitations, challenges, and future open issues in the context of delay tolerant network routing.

Geographic multipath routing based on geospatial division in duty-cycled underwater wireless sensor networks

In Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs), the geographic routing is a preferred choice for data transmission due to the unique characteristics of underwater environment such as the three dimensional topology, the limited bandwidth and power resources. This paper focuses on underwater routing protocols in the network layer, where underwater sensor nodes can collaborate with each other to transfer data information. The three dimensional underwater network is first divided into small cube spaces, thus data packets are supposed to be collaboratively transmitted by unit of small cubes logically. By taking complex properties of underwater medium into consideration such as three dimensional topology, high propagation delay and path loss of acoustic channel, we propose two novel multi-path strategies called Greedy Geographic Forwarding based on Geospatial Division (GGFGD) and Geographic Forwarding based on Geospatial Division (GFGD). The proposed two algorithms mainly consist of two phases, choosing the next target small cube, and choosing the next hop node in the target small cube. Furthermore, all the sensor nodes in the network are duty-cycled in the MAC layer. Finally, performance analysis is derived, and simulation results illustrate the performance improvement in finding route paths, optimal length of found paths. In addition, energy consumption of route finding is reduced and propagation delay of data transmission is decreased.

A Link-State Based Adaptive Feedback Routing for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) have recently been attracted significant attention from both academia and industry for resources exploration and for scientific data gathering in underwater environments. The important characteristic of a UASN is that most underwater acoustic sensor nodes have a certain beam width and a three dimension direction, which is ignored by the existing underwater routing protocols. This characteristic will reduce the network connectivity and cause a large number of asymmetric links, so it will lead to sharp decline of the existing protocol performance. We develop a routing protocol to tackle this problem in UASNs. A link detection mechanism is employed to get link state information (symmetrical link or asymmetric link), and an adaptive routing feedback method is adopted to make full use of the underwater asymmetric link and save energy. We propose a time-based priority forwarding mechanism and utilize downstream node table to prevent flooding, and a credit-based routing table update mechanism is adopted to avoid energy consumption caused by frequent update of routing table. The proposed protocol is compared with a representative routing protocol for UASNs. The simulation results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed protocol.

A distance-based probabilistic routing for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks UASNs have received significant attention recently. The important characteristic of an underwater acoustic sensor network is that, most underwater acoustic sensor nodes have a certain beam width and a three-dimensional direction, which are ignored by the existing underwater routing protocols. This characteristic will lead to the sharp decline of the existing protocol performance. We develop a Distance-Based Probabilistic Routing DBPR protocol to tackle this problem in UASNs. DBPR uses forward probability to determine whether to forward the data packet. Forwarding probability is influenced by the distance and the beam width of the node. A key advantage of our protocol is that it can achieve relatively high packet delivery rate and ensure reasonable energy consumption when taken into account the above characteristic. The proposed protocol is compared with a representative routing protocol for UASNs. The simulation results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed work.

A Network Coding Based Routing Protocol for Underwater Sensor Networks

Due to the particularities of the underwater environment, some negative factors will seriously interfere with data transmission rates, reliability of data communication, communication range, and network throughput and energy consumption of underwater sensor networks (UWSNs). Thus, full consideration of node energy savings, while maintaining a quick, correct and effective data transmission, extending the network life cycle are essential when routing protocols for underwater sensor networks are studied. In this paper, we have proposed a novel routing algorithm for UWSNs. To increase energy consumption efficiency and extend network lifetime, we propose a time-slot based routing algorithm (TSR).We designed a probability balanced mechanism and applied it to TSR. The theory of network coding is introduced to TSBR to meet the requirement of further reducing node energy consumption and extending network lifetime. Hence, time-slot based balanced network coding (TSBNC) comes into being. We evaluated the proposed time-slot based balancing routing algorithm and compared it with other classical underwater routing protocols. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol can reduce the probability of node conflicts, shorten the process of routing construction, balance energy consumption of each node and effectively prolong the network lifetime.

AURP: An AUV-Aided Underwater Routing Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Deploying a multi-hop underwater acoustic sensor network (UASN) in a large area brings about new challenges in reliable data transmissions and survivability of network due to the limited underwater communication range/bandwidth and the limited energy of underwater sensor nodes. In order to address those challenges and achieve the objectives of maximization of data delivery ratio and minimization of energy consumption of underwater sensor nodes, this paper proposes a new underwater routing scheme, namely AURP (AUV-aided underwater routing protocol), which uses not only heterogeneous acoustic communication channels but also controlled mobility of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). In AURP, the total data transmissions are minimized by using AUVs as relay nodes, which collect sensed data from gateway nodes and then forward to the sink. Moreover, controlled mobility of AUVs makes it possible to apply a short-range high data rate underwater channel for transmissions of a large amount of data. To the best to our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to employ multiple AUVs as relay nodes in a multi-hop UASN to improve the network performance in terms of data delivery ratio and energy consumption. Simulations, which are incorporated with a realistic underwater acoustic communication channel model, are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, and the results indicate that a high delivery ratio and low energy consumption can be achieved.