Event-Driven Data Gathering in Pure Asynchronous Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

[EN] In underwater acoustic modem design, pure asynchrony can contribute to improved wake-up coordination, thus avoiding energy-inefficient synchronization mechanisms. Nodes are designed with a pre-receptor and an acoustically adapted Radio Frequency Identification system, which wakes up the node when it receives an external tone. The facts that no synchronism protocol is necessary and that the time between waking up and packet reception is narrow make pure asynchronism highly efficient for energy saving. However, handshaking in the Medium Control Access layer must be adapted to maintain the premise of pure asynchronism. This paper explores different models to carry out this type of adaptation, comparing them via simulation in ns-3. Moreover, because energy saving is highly important to data gathering driven by underwater vehicles, where nodes can spend long periods without connection, this paper is focused on multi-hop topologies. When a vehicle appears in a 3D scenario, it is expected to gather as much information as possible in the minimum amount of time. Vehicle appearance is the event that triggers the gathering process, not only from the nearest nodes but from every node in the 3D volume. Therefore, this paper assumes, as a requirement, a topology of at least three hops. The results show that classic handshaking will perform better than tone reservation because hidden nodes annulate the positive effect of channel reservation. However, in highly dense networks, a combination model with polling will shorten the gathering time.Blanc Clavero, S. (2020). Event-Driven Data Gathering in Pure Asynchronous Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. Sensors. 20(5):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20051407S116205Roy, A., & Sarma, N. (2018). Effects of Various Factors on Performance of MAC Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks. Materials Today: Proceedings, 5(1), 2263-2274. doi:10.1016/j.matpr.2017.09.228Awan, K. M., Shah, P. A., Iqbal, K., Gillani, S., Ahmad, W., & Nam, Y. (2019). Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review of Recent Issues and Challenges. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2019, 1-20. doi:10.1155/2019/6470359Rudnick, D. L., Davis, R. E., Eriksen, C. C., Fratantoni, D. M., & Perry, M. J. (2004). Underwater Gliders for Ocean Research. Marine Technology Society Journal, 38(2), 73-84. doi:10.4031/002533204787522703Petritoli, E., & Leccese, F. (2018). High Accuracy Attitude and Navigation System for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). ACTA IMEKO, 7(2), 3. doi:10.21014/acta_imeko.v7i2.535Nam, H. (2018). Data-Gathering Protocol-Based AUV Path-Planning for Long-Duration Cooperation in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. IEEE Sensors Journal, 18(21), 8902-8912. doi:10.1109/jsen.2018.2866837Sun, J., Hu, F., Jin, W., Wang, J., Wang, X., Luo, Y., … Zhang, A. (2020). Model-Aided Localization and Navigation for Underwater Gliders Using Single-Beacon Travel-Time Differences. Sensors, 20(3), 893. doi:10.3390/s20030893Wahid, A., Lee, S., Kim, D., & Lim, K.-S. (2014). MRP: A Localization-Free Multi-Layered Routing Protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks. Wireless Personal Communications, 77(4), 2997-3012. doi:10.1007/s11277-014-1690-6Sánchez, A., Blanc, S., Yuste, P., Perles, A., & Serrano, J. J. (2012). An Ultra-Low Power and Flexible Acoustic Modem Design to Develop Energy-Efficient Underwater Sensor Networks. Sensors, 12(6), 6837-6856. doi:10.3390/s120606837Li, S., Qu, W., Liu, C., Qiu, T., & Zhao, Z. (2019). Survey on high reliability wireless communication for underwater sensor networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 148, 102446. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2019.102446Jiang, S. (2018). State-of-the-Art Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Networks: A Survey Based on a MAC Reference Model. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 20(1), 96-131. doi:10.1109/comst.2017.2768802Chirdchoo, N., Soh, W., & Chua, K. C. (2008). RIPT: A Receiver-Initiated Reservation-Based Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 26(9), 1744-1753. doi:10.1109/jsac.2008.081213Zenia, N. Z., Aseeri, M., Ahmed, M. R., Chowdhury, Z. I., & Shamim Kaiser, M. (2016). Energy-efficiency and reliability in MAC and routing protocols for underwater wireless sensor network: A survey. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 71, 72-85. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2016.06.005Khasawneh, A., Latiff, M. S. B. A., Kaiwartya, O., & Chizari, H. (2017). A reliable energy-efficient pressure-based routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor network. Wireless Networks, 24(6), 2061-2075. doi:10.1007/s11276-017-1461-xSánchez, A., Blanc, S., Yuste, P., Perles, A., & Serrano, J. J. (2015). An Acoustic Modem Featuring a Multi-Receiver and Ultra-Low Power. Circuits and Systems, 06(01), 1-12. doi:10.4236/cs.2015.6100

Medium access control, error control and routing in underwater acoustic networks: a discussion on protocol design and implementation

The journey of underwater communication which began from Leonardo’s era took four and a half centuries to find practical applications for military purposes during World War II. However, over the last three decades, underwater acoustic communications witnessed a massive development due to the advancements in the design of underwater communicating peripherals and their supporting protocols. Successively, doors are opened for a wide range of applications to employ in the underwater environment, such as oceanography, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, navigation assistance, monitoring, coastal patrol and surveillance. Different applications may have different characteristics and hence, may require different network architectures. For instance, routing protocols designed for unpartitioned multi-hop networks are not suitable for Delay-Tolerant Networks. Furthermore, single-hop networks do not need routing protocols at all. Therefore, before developing a protocol one must study the network architecture properly and design it accordingly. There are several other factors which should also be considered with the network architecture while designing an efficient protocol for underwater networks, such as long propagation delay, limited bandwidth, limited battery power, high bit error rate of the channel and several other adverse properties of the channel, such as, multi-path, fading and refractive behaviors. Moreover, the environment also has an impact on the performance of the protocols designed for underwater networks. Even temperature changes in a single day have an impact on the performance of the protocols. A good protocol designed for any network should consider some or all of these characteristics to achieve better performance. In this thesis, we first discuss the impact of the environment on the performance of MAC and routing protocols. From our investigation, we discover that even temperature changes within a day may affect the sound speed profile and hence, the channel changes and the protocol performance vary. After that we discuss several protocols which are specifically designed for underwater acoustic networks to serve different purposes and for different network architectures. Underwater Selective Repeat (USR) is an error control protocol designed to assure reliable data transmission in the MAC layer. One may suspect that employing an error control technique over a channel which already suffers from long propagation delays is a burden. However, USR utilizes long propagation by transmitting multiple packets in a single RTT using an interlacing technique. After USR, a routing protocol for surveillance networks is discussed where some sensors are laid down at the bottom of the sea and some sinks are placed outside the area. If a sensor detects an asset within its detection range, it announces the presence of intruders by transmitting packets to the sinks. It may happen that the discovered asset is an enemy ship or an enemy submarine which creates noise to jam the network. Therefore, in surveillance networks, it is necessary that the protocols have jamming resistance capabilities. Moreover, since the network supports multiple sinks with similar anycast address, we propose a Jamming Resistance multi-path Multi-Sink Routing Protocol (MSRP) using a source routing technique. However, the problem of source routing is that it suffers from large overhead (every packet includes the whole path information) with respect to other routing techniques, and also suffers from the unidirectional link problem. Therefore, another routing protocol based on a distance vector technique, called Multi-path Routing with Limited Cross-Path Interference (L-CROP) protocol is proposed, which employs a neighbor-aware multi-path discovery algorithm to support low interference multiple paths between each source-destination pair. Following that, another routing protocol is discussed for next generation coastal patrol and surveillance network, called Underwater Delay-Tolerant Network (UDTN) routing where some AUVs carry out the patrolling work of a given area and report to a shore based control-center. Since the area to be patrolled is large, AUVs experience intermittent connectivity. In our proposed protocol, two nodes that understand to be in contact with each other calculate and divide their contact duration equally so that every node gets a fair share of the contact duration to exchange data. Moreover, a probabilistic spray technique is employed to restrict the number of packet transmissions and for error correction a modified version of USR is employed. In the appendix, we discuss a framework which was designed by our research group to realize underwater communication through simulation which is used in most of the simulations in this thesis, called DESERT Underwater (short for DEsign, Simulate, Emulate and Realize Test-beds for Underwater network protocols). It is an underwater extension of the NS-Miracle simulator to support the design and implementation of underwater network protocols. Its creation assists the researchers in to utilizing the same codes designed for the simulator to employ in actual hardware devices and test in the real underwater scenario