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

Self-organizing Fast Routing Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Communications Networks

To address this problem, in this thesis we propose a cross-layer proactive routing initialization mechanism that does not require additional measurements and, at the same time, is energy efficient. Two routing protocols are proposed: Self-Organized Fast Routing Protocol for Radial Underwater Networks (SOFRP) for radial topology and Self-organized Proactive Routing Protocol for Non-uniformly Deployed Underwater Networks (SPRINT) for a randomly deployed network. SOFRP is based on the algorithm to recreate a radial topology with a gateway node, such that packets always use the shortest possible path from source to sink, thus minimizing consumed energy. Collisions are avoided as much as possible during the path initialization. The algorithm is suitable for 2D or 3D areas, and automatically adapts to a varying number of nodes. In SPRINT the routing path to the gateway is formed on the basis of the distance, measured by the signal strength received. The data sending node prefers to choose the neighbor node which is closest to it. It is designed to achieve high data throughput and low energy consumption of the nodes. There is a tradeoff between the throughput and the energy consumption: more distance needs more transmission energy, and more relay nodes (hops) to the destination node affects the throughput. Each hop increases the packet delay and decreases the throughput. Hence, energy consumption requires nearest nodes to be chosen as forwarding node whereas the throughput requires farthest node to be selected to minimize the number of hops. Fecha de lectura de Tesis Doctoral: 11 mayo 2020Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) constitute an emerging technology for marine surveillance, natural disaster alert and environmental monitoring. Unlike terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), electromagnetic waves cannot propagate more than few meters in water (high absorption rate). However, acoustic waves can travel long distances in underwater. Therefore, acoustic waves are preferred for underwater communications, but they travel very slow compare to EM waves (typical speed in water is 1500 m/s against 2x10^8 m/s for EM waves). This physical effect makes a high propagation delay and cannot be avoided, but the end-to-end packet delay it can be reduced. Routing delay is one of the major factors in end-to-end packet delay. In reactive routing protocols, when a packet arrives to a node, the node takes some time to select the node to which the data packet would be forwarded. We may reduce the routing delay for time-critical applications by using proactive routing protocols. Other two critical issues in UWSNs are determining the position of the nodes and time synchronization. Wireless sensor nodes need to determine the position of the surrounding nodes to select the next node in the path to reach the sink node. A Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) cannot be used because of the very short underwater range of the GNSS signal. Timestamping to estimate the distance is possible but the limited mobility of the UWSN nodes and variation in the propagation speed of the acoustic waves make the time synchronization a challenging task. For these reasons, terrestrial WSN protocols cannot be readily used for underwater acoustic networks

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

A Survey on Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network Routing Protocols

Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have become more and more important in ocean exploration applications, such as ocean monitoring, pollution detection, ocean resource management, underwater device maintenance, etc. In underwater acoustic sensor networks, since the routing protocol guarantees reliable and effective data transmission from the source node to the destination node, routing protocol design is an attractive topic for researchers. There are many routing algorithms have been proposed in recent years. To present the current state of development of UASN routing protocols, we review herein the UASN routing protocol designs reported in recent years. In this paper, all the routing protocols have been classified into different groups according to their characteristics and routing algorithms, such as the non-cross-layer design routing protocol, the traditional cross-layer design routing protocol, and the intelligent algorithm based routing protocol. This is also the first paper that introduces intelligent algorithm-based UASN routing protocols. In addition, in this paper, we investigate the development trends of UASN routing protocols, which can provide researchers with clear and direct insights for further research

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms