Dynamic Length Packet Size Communication Technique for Underwater Sensor Networks

Abstract

Greatly unexplored vastness of the ocean attracts human beings to discover knowledge in deep water. Underwater environment is a big challenge for human beings because of changeable and unknown conditions. A highly precise, real time and continuous monitoring system is extremely important for underwater aquatic surveillance, river and sea pollution discovery, oceanographic data compilation and commercial exploitation of the aquatic environment. Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) with acoustic channel have better performance than radio and optics in underwater environment for interactive communication. However, current techniques suffer from several limitations due to unique challenges of underwater environment such as propagation delay, absorption loss and low bandwidth. Reliability is a major requirement in developing a communication technique that provides effective communication in terms of timeliness of data, better utilization of the channel and bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a naturally adaptive communication technique with an availability of bandwidth to transfer variable length packets. The packet size is determined by parameters including temperature, pressure, salinity and available bandwidth of acoustic channel.