Review on Opportunistic Routing Protocols for Underwater Sensor Networks with Open Issues

Abstract

Due to their usefulness in many fields, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSN) have gained more focus in the present. It relies on data collected and sent through a network of sensor nodes distributed around the ocean at varying depths. There has been a lot of interest from researchers in Opportunistic Routing (OR) because of its potential to improve the efficiency of wireless networks. For sensor networks to effectively communicate, a dynamic routing strategy is required. UWSNs have their own set of challenges, like dynamic topology, energy consumption, and delay. For these reasons, efficient routing protocols are being developed specifically for use in UWSNs. It is difficult to build OR procedures for UWSNs because of the unique properties of underwater communication. In this paper, the parameters such as complexity, packet delivery ratio, etc. that are involved in the analysis of OR protocols are expressed through a comparative analysis. Also being highlighted are several issues that are still open with the OR methods.