Routing Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: A Survey from an Application Perspective

Underwater acoustic communications are different from terrestrial radio communications; acoustic channel is asymmetric and has large and variable end‐to‐end propagation delays, distance‐dependent limited bandwidth, high bit error rates, and multi‐path fading. Besides, nodes’ mobility and limited battery power also cause problems for networking protocol design. Among them, routing in underwater acoustic networks is a challenging task, and many protocols have been proposed. In this chapter, we first classify the routing protocols according to application scenarios, which are classified according to the number of sinks that an underwater acoustic sensor network (UASN) may use, namely single‐sink, multi‐sink, and no‐sink. We review some typical routing strategies proposed for these application scenarios, such as cross‐layer and reinforcement learning as well as opportunistic routing. Finally, some remaining key issues are highlighted

Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

Overlay virtualized wireless sensor networks for application in industrial internet of things : a review

Abstract: In recent times, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are broadly applied in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of existing and prospective manufacturing industries. In particular, an area of interest that concerns the use of WSNs in IIoT is the concept of sensor network virtualization and overlay networks. Both network virtualization and overlay networks are considered contemporary because they provide the capacity to create services and applications at the edge of existing virtual networks without changing the underlying infrastructure. This capability makes both network virtualization and overlay network services highly beneficial, particularly for the dynamic needs of IIoT based applications such as in smart industry applications, smart city, and smart home applications. Consequently, the study of both WSN virtualization and overlay networks has become highly patronized in the literature, leading to the growth and maturity of the research area. In line with this growth, this paper provides a review of the development made thus far concerning virtualized sensor networks, with emphasis on the application of overlay networks in IIoT. Principally, the process of virtualization in WSN is discussed along with its importance in IIoT applications. Different challenges in WSN are also presented along with possible solutions given by the use of virtualized WSNs. Further details are also presented concerning the use of overlay networks as the next step to supporting virtualization in shared sensor networks. Our discussion closes with an exposition of the existing challenges in the use of virtualized WSN for IIoT applications. In general, because overlay networks will be contributory to the future development and advancement of smart industrial and smart city applications, this review may be considered by researchers as a reference point for those particularly interested in the study of this growing field

A scheme for efficient peer-to-peer live video streaming over wireless mesh networks

Peers in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) live video streaming system over hybrid wireless mesh networks (WMNs) enjoy high video quality when both random network coding (RNC) and an efficient hybrid routing protocol are employed. Although RNC is the most recently used method of efficient video streaming, it imposes high transmission overhead and decoding computational complexity on the network which reduces the perceived video quality. Besides that, RNC cannot guaranty a non-existence of linear dependency in the generated coefficients matrix. In WMNs, node mobility has not been efficiently addressed by current hybrid routing protocols that increase video distortion which would lead to low video quality. In addition, these protocols cannot efficiently support nodes which operate in infrastructure mode. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to propose a P2P live video streaming scheme which consists of two phases followed by the integration of these two phases known as the third phase to provide high video quality in hybrid WMNs. In the first phase, a novel coefficients matrix generation and inversion method has been proposed to address the mentioned limitations of RNC. In the second phase, the proposed enhanced hybrid routing protocol was used to efficiently route video streams among nodes using the most stable path with low routing overhead. Moreover, this protocol effectively supports mobility and nodes which operate in infrastructure mode by exploiting the advantages of the designed locator service. Results of simulations from the first phase showed that video distortion as the most important performance metric in live video streaming, had improved by 36 percent in comparison with current RNC method which employs the Gauss-Jordan Elimination (RNC-GJE) method in decoding. Other metrics including frame dependency distortion, initial start-up delay and end-to-end delay have also improved using the proposed method. Based on previous studies, although Reactive (DYMO) routing protocol provides better performance than other existing routing protocols in a hybrid WMN, the proposed protocol in the second phase had average improvements in video distortion of l86% for hybrid wireless mesh protocol (HWMP), 49% for Reactive (Dynamic MANET On-Demand-DYMO), 75% for Proactive (Optimized Link State Routing-OLSR), and 60% for Ad-hoc on-demand Distance Vector Spanning-Tree (AODV-ST). Other metrics including end-to-end delay, packet delay variation, routing overhead and number of delivered video frames have also improved using the proposed protocol. Finally, the third phase, an integration of the first two phases has proven to be an efficient scheme for high quality P2P live video streaming over hybrid WMNs. This video streaming scheme had averagely improved video distortion by 41%, frame dependency distortion by 50%, initial start-up delay by 15% and end-to-end delay by 33% in comparison with the average introduced values by three other considered integration cases which are Reactive and RNC-GJE, Reactive and the first phase, the second phase and RNC-GJE

On-Site and External Energy Harvesting in Underground Wireless

Energy efficiency is vital for uninterrupted long-term operation of wireless underground communication nodes in the field of decision agriculture. In this paper, energy harvesting and wireless power transfer techniques are discussed with applications in underground wireless communications (UWC). Various external wireless power transfer techniques are explored. Moreover, key energy harvesting technologies are presented that utilize available energy sources in the field such as vibration, solar, and wind. In this regard, the Electromagnetic(EM)- and Magnetic Induction(MI)-based approaches are explained. Furthermore, the vibration-based energy harvesting models are reviewed as well. These energy harvesting approaches lead to design of an efficient wireless underground communication system to power underground nodes for prolonged field operation in decision agriculture

A Survey on Subsurface Signal Propagation

Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview of WUC. It discusses system architecture of WUC along with the anatomy of the underground sensor motes deployed in WUC systems. It also compares Over-the-Air and Underground and highlights the major differences between the both type of channels. Since, UG communication is an evolving field, this paper also presents the evolution of the field along with the components and example UG wireless communication systems. Finally, the current research challenges of the system are presented for further improvement of the WUCs