Challenges and routing issues in
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
IBCAST 18th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technologies
Dr. Abdul Wahid
SEECS, NUST
12 Jan 2021
1
Contents
UWSN Intro.
Applications of UWSN
Network operation Challenges of UWSN
Differences with Terrestrial
Routing issues in UWSN
Existing survey articles and their taxonomies
Well-known routing protocols
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs)
 Group of sensors and vehicles deployed underwater
and networked via
collaborative tasks.
2D architecture of an UWSN
acoustic
link,
performing
3D architecture of an UWSN
3
Applications of UWSNs
 Environmental Monitoring
 Pollution monitoring
 Biological monitoring
 Monitoring of ocean currents, improved weather
forecast, detecting climate change etc.
4
Applications of UWSNs
 Undersea explorations
 UWSN can be helpful in detecting underwater oil
fields/reservoirs, determine routes for laying under sea
cables and in explorations of valuable minerals.
5
Applications of UWSNs
 Disaster Prevention
 Tsunami warnings.
 Submarine earthquakes.
6
Applications of UWSNs
 Assisted Navigation
 Sensors can be used to identify hazards on the seabed, locate
dangerous rocks, mooring positions, submerged wrecks etc.
7
Applications of UWSNs
 Tactical Surveillance
 Detect and classify submarine, vehicles
8
Applications of UWSNs
 Ocean Sampling
 Sensors and AUVs can perform synoptic, cooperative
adaptive sampling of the 3D coastal ocean environment.
9
Network operation Challenges of UWSNs
 High delay
 Acoustic signals (1500 m/sec)
 Limited bandwidth
 Less than 100 kHz
 High error rate
 Path loss



Attenuation
Geometric Spreading
Noise


Man made noise
Ambient noise
 Energy limitations
[1] Ian F. Akyildiz , Dario Pompili, Tommaso Melodia, “Underwater acoustic sensor networks: research
challenges”, Ad Hoc Networks, Volume 3, Issue 3, pp. 257-279, 2005.
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Differences with Terrestrial
Terrestrial
Underwater
• Low Cost
• High Cost
• Easy Deployment
• Complexity in Deployment
• Low Power consumption
• Power hungry transmitters
• Dense Networks
• Sparse Networks
RF (Radio Frequency Signal)
Speed : 3x 108 m/s
Acoustic Signal
Speed : 1500 m/s
[1] Ian F. Akyildiz , Dario Pompili, Tommaso Melodia, “Underwater acoustic sensor networks: research
challenges”, Ad Hoc Networks, Volume 3, Issue 3, pp. 257-279, 2005.
11
Survey articles related to routing
protocols in UWSN
S.No.
Title
Journal
Year
1
Analyzing Routing Protocols for
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
International Journal of
Communication Networks
and Information Security
2010
2
Routing protocols based on node mobility
for Underwater Wireless Sensor
Network (UWSN): A survey
ELSEVIER Journal of
Network and Computer
Applications
2017
3
Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless
Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Research
Challenges, Routing
Strategies and Future Directions
MDPI Sensors
2018
4
A Comprehensive Survey of Recent
Routing Protocols for Underwater Acoustic
Sensor Networks
MDPI Sensors
2019
5
A Survey on Underwater Wireless Sensor
Networks: Requirements, Taxonomy,
Recent Advances, and Open Research
Challenges
MDPI Sensors
2020
6
A Survey of Routing Protocols for
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
IEEE Communications
surveys & Tutorials
01 Jan 2021
12
Analyzing Routing Protocols for Underwater
Wireless Sensor Networks, 2010
Routing Protocols
for UWSNs
Vector based
Multi-path based
Cluster based
Miscellaneous
protocols
protocols
protocols
protocols
VBF
HH-VBF
Winston et al. scheme
DFR
D. Pompili et al. scheme
MCCP
MPT
DUCS
Adaptive
….
…..
SEANAR ….
FBR
SBR-DLP
….
DBR
H2-DAB
EEDBR
Phero-trail
[2] A. Wahid, Dongkun Kim, Analyzing Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks, International
Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS) Vol. 2, No. 3, December 2010
13
Routing protocols based on node mobility for Underwater
Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN): A survey, 2017
 Routing protocols based on node mobility
 Vector based

VBF, HHVBF, CVBF etc.
 Depth based
 DBR, EEDBR, H2-DAB etc.
 Clustered based
 Hydrocast, DUCS
 AUV based
 Mobicast
 Path based
 MRP
[3] Mukhtiar Ahmed et. al. “Routing protocols based on node mobility for Underwater Wireless Sensor Network
(UWSN): A survey”, Journal of Network and Computer Applications 78 (2017) 242–252
14
Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Taxonomy,
Research Challenges, Routing Strategies and Future Directions, 2018
 Location based

Node mobility based

Energy balancing

Mitigating channel condition

Addressing energy consumption

Addressing void region
 Location free

Node mobility based

Energy balancing

Mitigating channel condition

Addressing energy consumption

Addressing void region
[4] Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Research Challenges, Routing
Strategies and Future Directions, 2018, Sensors 2018, 18, 1619; doi:10.3390/s18051619
15
A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Routing Protocols for
Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks, 2019
[5] Tariq Islam and Yong Kyu Lee, “A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Routing Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks”,
16
Sensors 2019, 19, 4256; doi:10.3390/s19194256
A Survey on Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks:
Requirements, Taxonomy, Recent Advances, and Open Research
Challenges, 2020
[6]
Salmah Fattah et. al. A Survey on Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Requirements, Taxonomy, Recent Advances, and Open Researc
17
Challenges, Sensors 2020, 20, 5393; doi:10.3390/s20185393
A Survey of Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor
Networks, 2021
[7] Junhai Luo et. al. “ A Survey of Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks “, DOI 10.1109/COMST.2020.3048190, IEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials , 2021
18
Vector based routing
VBF
HH-VBF
19
Depth based routing
DBR
H2-DAB
20
Depth Based Routing
EEDBR: Energy-efficient Depth Based
Routing
Appeared in International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (IJDSN)
21
Depth based routing
 The proposed routing protocol has two phases
 Knowledge Acquisition Phase
During this phase, the sensor nodes share their depth and
residual energy information among their one hop neighbors.
 Data Forwarding Phase
During the data forwarding phase, the sender selects
forwarding nodes having lower depth than the sender and
having high residual energy.
22
Knowledge acquisition phase
 Each sensor node broadcasts a Hello packet to its one hop
neighbors
 The Hello packet contains the depth and the residual energy
information, the format of the Hello packet is shown below in
Figure 2.
Sender ID
Residual
Energy
Depth
Figure 2: Format of Hello packet
Figure 1: UWSN: 3-D Architecture
23
Data forwarding phase
 Each node has following info about its neighbors
 Depth
 Residual energy
 Sender selects forwarding nodes which are closer to sink




and away from the sender upto a certain threshold.
Sorting according to residual energy
The node having highest residual energy is selected as
highest priority node.
A list of IDs is included in the data packet.
Highest priority node has zero holding time, others hold
the packet based on their residual energy value.
24
Data forwarding phase cont.
25
Performance evaluation
26
Performance evaluation..
27
Physical Distance Based Routing
R-ERP2R: Reliable and Energy-Efficient
Routing Protocol based on Physical
distance and Residual Energy
Appeared in International Journal of Communication Systems (IJCS)
28
Data forwarding phase cont.
n2
n3
n1
1.4
1.8
1.2
S
29
Performance evaluation
30
Performance evaluation..
31
MRP: A Localization-Free MultiLayered Routing Protocol for
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
Appeared in Wireless Personal Communication journal
32
Data Forwarding phase
33
Performance evaluation
34
Performance evaluation..
35
Challenges/Future Directions
 Routing protocols taking into account the water




currents i.e. mobility pattern of sensor nodes
Avoiding void region needs to be investigated
Protocols for specific scenario are needed to be
evaluated e.g. shallow water vs deep water
Cross layer approach evaluation
Intelligent algorithm e.g. ant colony algorithm (ACO),
Genetic algorithm
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References
[1] Ian F. Akyildiz , Dario Pompili, Tommaso Melodia, “Underwater acoustic sensor networks: research
challenges”, Ad Hoc Networks, Volume 3, Issue 3, pp. 257-279, 2005.
[2] A. Wahid, Dongkun Kim, Analyzing Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks,
International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS) Vol. 2, No. 3, December
2010
[3] Mukhtiar Ahmed et. al. “Routing protocols based on node mobility for Underwater Wireless Sensor
Network (UWSN): A survey”, Journal of Network and Computer Applications 78 (2017) 242–252
[4] Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Research Challenges, Routing
Strategies and Future Directions, 2018, Sensors 2018, 18, 1619; doi:10.3390/s18051619
[5] Tariq Islam and Yong Kyu Lee, “A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Routing Protocols for Underwater
Acoustic Sensor Networks”, Sensors 2019, 19, 4256; doi:10.3390/s19194256
[6] Salmah Fattah et. al. A Survey on Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Requirements, Taxonomy, Recent
Advances, and Open Research Challenges, Sensors 2020, 20, 5393; doi:10.3390/s20185393
[7] Junhai Luo et. al. “ A Survey of Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks “, DOI
10.1109/COMST.2020.3048190, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials , 2021
[8] Nicolas Nicolaou, Andrew See, Peng Xie, “Improving the robustness of location-based routing for
Underwater Sensor networks”, IEEE OCEANS 2007, pp. 1-6, 2007.
[9] M Jornet, M Stojanovic, M Zorzi, “Focused beam routing protocol for underwater acoustic networks”, 3rd
ACM conference WuWNet’08, 2008.
37
Thank you
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