Reconfigurable underwater embedded systems architectures

Underwater sensor networks are bounded by data sensing, transmitting, and forwarding limitations. The transmitting of large volumes of data can require a large amount of time and power. This has led researchers to focus on the new technology of underwater computing systems, in which information is extracted under the water using embedded processors via data mining and/or data compression. In this paper, a set of underwater embedded system (UWES) architectures is developed that can handle different network configurations. These developed architectures have a single processing node and are assumed to be homogenous. An architecture is selected to match a given set of requirements including data rate, processing node capabilities, gathering nodes capabilities, and water depth. Analytical models are developed for each type of architecture, which estimate both end to end delay and power consumption. Simulations that verify the results and evaluate the performance of the architectures are also provided.