Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: A Comprehensive Survey of Routing Protocols

Abstract

Underwater environments present unique challenges in deploying efficient and reliable networks due to temperature and pressure differential, ambient waves and currents that displaces sensor nodes, inability of using RF channels due to signal loss and other chemical and biological factors that hinder effective underwater communication. Though radio signals have been replaced with acoustic channels due to their longer wavelengths and longer distance of signal propagation, achieving energy efficiency in a sensor network has been a significant challenge. A multitude of proposed routing protocols take into consideration the amount of energy that sensor nodes consume in the network. In this document, we implement and analyze four routing protocols proposed for Underwater Wireless Sensor Network, namely, Hop-by-Hop Dynamic Address Based Routing, Depth-Based Routing, Energy aware Opportunistic Routing and Energy-Efficient Depth-Based Routing. Performance of each routing protocols is simulated on the basis of the number of packets sent to Base Station, number of alive nodes, and number of dead nodes. We have used MATLAB to simulate how water currents affect the performance of each of these routing protocols. Our work enables a better understanding of various underwater routing protocols, their performance and helps network managers to choose an appropriate routing protocol under specific situations.