Cellular Underwater Wireless Optical CDMA Network: Potentials and Challenges

Underwater wireless optical communications is an emerging solution to the expanding demand for broadband links in oceans and seas. In this paper, a cellular underwater wireless optical code division multiple-access (UW-OCDMA) network is proposed to provide broadband links for commercial and military applications. The optical orthogonal codes (OOC) are employed as signature codes of underwater mobile users. Fundamental key aspects of the network such as its backhaul architecture, its potential applications and its design challenges are presented. In particular, the proposed network is used as infrastructure of centralized, decentralized and relay-assisted underwater sensor networks for high-speed real-time monitoring. Furthermore, a promising underwater localization and positioning scheme based on this cellular network is presented. Finally, probable design challenges such as cell edge coverage, blockage avoidance, power control and increasing the network capacity are addressed.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

A distributed approach to underwater acoustic communications

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2003A novel distributed underwater acoustic networking (UAN) protocol suitable for ad-hoc deployments of both stationary and mobile nodes dispersed across a relatively wide coverage area is presented. Nodes are dynamically clustered in a distributed manner based on the estimated position of one-hop neighbor nodes within a shallow water environment. The spatial dynamic cellular clustering scheme allows scalable communication resource allocation and channel reuse similar in design to land-based cellular architectures, except devoid of the need for a centralized controlling infrastructure. Simulation results demonstrate that relatively high degrees of interference immunity, network connectivity, and network stability can be achieved despite the severe limitations of the underwater acoustic channel

QoS Challenges in wireless sensor networked robotics

Wireless sensor networks and mobile robotics are two hot research topics. Integrating them leads to a wide range of new applications in many different environments such as terrestrial, underwater, underground and aerial. Where sensor networks are mainly used for large-scale monitoring and control, mobile robotics are used for performing fine-scale actions and automation. Network heterogeneity together with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) demands from applications such as voice and video make QoS support very challenging. Therefore, this paper investigates the QoS challenges in wireless sensor networked robotics and presents a novel QoS framework as solution to cope with these challenges

Wireless Sensor Networks for Oceanographic Monitoring: A Systematic Review

Monitoring of the marine environment has come to be a field of scientific interest in the last ten years. The instruments used in this work have ranged from small-scale sensor networks to complex observation systems. Among small-scale networks, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a highly attractive solution in that they are easy to deploy, operate and dismantle and are relatively inexpensive. The aim of this paper is to identify, appraise, select and synthesize all high quality research evidence relevant to the use of WSNs in oceanographic monitoring. The literature is systematically reviewed to offer an overview of the present state of this field of study and identify the principal resources that have been used to implement networks of this kind. Finally, this article details the challenges and difficulties that have to be overcome if these networks are to be successfully deployed

Underwater Acoustic Modems

© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Due to the growing interest using underwater acoustic networks, there are more and more research papers about underwater communications. These papers are mainly focused on deployments and studies about the constraints of the underwater medium. The underwater acoustic channel is highly variable and the signal transmission can change according to environmental factors such as the temperature, pressure or salinity of the water. For this reason, it is important to know how these devices are developed and the maximum distance and data transfer rates they can achieve. To this end, this paper presents an exhaustive study of existing underwater acoustic modems where their main features are highlighted. We also review the main features of their hardware. All presented proposals in the research literature are compared with commercial underwater acoustic modems. Finally, we analyze different programs and improvements of existing network simulators that are often used to simulate and estimate the behavior of underwater networks.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion through the Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008-2011 within the Subprograma de Proyectos de Investigacion Fundamental under Project TEC2011-27516. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Dr. Lei Shu. (Corresponding author: Jaime Lloret.)Sendra, S.; Lloret, J.; Jimenez, JM.; Parra-Boronat, L. (2015). Underwater Acoustic Modems. IEEE Sensors Journal. 16(11):4063-4071. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2015.2434890S40634071161

From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications

Adaptable underwater networks: The relation between autonomy and communications

This paper discusses requirements for autonomy and communications in maritime environments through two use cases which are sourced from military scenarios: Mine Counter Measures (MCM) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). To address these requirements, this work proposes a service-oriented architecture that breaks the typical boundaries between the autonomy and the communications stacks. An initial version of the architecture has been implemented and its deployment during a field trial done in January 2019 is reported. The paper discusses the achieved results in terms of system flexibility and ability to address the MCM and ASW requirements

Data Collection in Smart Communities Using Sensor Cloud: Recent Advances, Taxonomy, and Future Research Directions

The remarkable miniaturization of sensors has led to the production of massive amounts of data in smart communities. These data cannot be efficiently collected and processed in WSNs due to the weak communication capability of these networks. This drawback can be compensated for by amalgamating WSNs and cloud computing to obtain sensor clouds. In this article, we investigate, highlight, and report recent premier advances in sensor clouds with respect to data collection. We categorize and classify the literature by devising a taxonomy based on important parameters, such as objectives, applications, communication technology, collection types, discovery, data types, and classification. Moreover, a few prominent use cases are presented to highlight the role of sensor clouds in providing high computation capabilities. Furthermore, several open research challenges and issues, such as big data issues, deployment issues, data security, data aggregation, dissemination of control message, and on time delivery are discussed. Future research directions are also provided