Challenges and issues in underwater acoustics sensor networks: A review

Abstract

The Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UWASN) consists of sensors that are deployed underwater for gathering information for the unexplored parts of oceans or rivers. UWASN consists of variable number of floating and anchored sensors, sink and vehicles that are deployed over an area to be explored. The characteristics of UWASN are mainly node mobility for floating, capacity for data collection and recording and autonomous vehicles which are battery operable. The communication is possible among underwater devices through optical waves, radio waves, electromagnetic and acoustics. Out of these, acoustics communication is best suited as it can carry digital information through underwater channel and can travel to longer distances. The communication can be classified in two parts: Single and multi hoping. But in underwater we use multi-hop communication for sending data from end nodes to sink nodes. The various challenges to UWASN are limited bandwidth, multipath fading, limited battery, limited data capacity and delay in propagation. Hence, in this paper we have focussed on various issues and challenges in underwater wireless sensor networks for acoustic communications.