uw-WiFi: An Underwater Wireless Sensor Network for Data Collection and Network Control in Real Environments

Abstract

Underwater acoustic networking has become a promising approach for diverse oceanic applications range from civilian to military. This type of networks is vastly different from terrestrial wireless sensor networks and tremendous work have accelerated the realization. However, very few works study the issue of underwater data collection and network nodes control, which is crucial in many real applications. This calls for a new underwater acoustic network design. In this paper we present a Wi-Fi based underwater acoustic network, called uw-WiFi. which is robust, highly customizable, energy efficient to tackle the real harsh underwater environment and meet the diverse application requirements. We first give a detailed design of uw-WiFi including the network architecture and protocols at different layers. Following that, we conduct a case study with 5 different kinds of network nodes. The network has been tested in the real environments. The results show that the uw-WiFi network is not only able to meet the current urgent application needs but also achieve a satisfying network performance.