In the current era of the digital world, Underwater Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) is growing fast in both engineering and academic zones. The reason behind this sudden explosion is the vast advancements in many real-world underwater monitoring applications. And, some of them are environs, seabed, seismic, ocean observation, and investigation.  

This page presents a review of Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks!!!

Although the impression of UWSN is spread in many research fields, it has some constraints on integrating with real-world scenarios. And they are resource-restricted sensors (energy and battery), greater (noise, inference, transmission delay, and loss), varying network structure, aggressive environs, long multi-path latency, and limited bandwidth. 

The above-specified majority of the problems are tackled by efficient routing protocols. Since it effectively protects the data at the time of transmission from a sender device to a receiver device. The one and only important thing are how capably Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks are designed and how the routing challenges are sorted out. Our research team is here to assist you in addressing these questions through the latest technologies. Below, we have listed out the primary UWSN applications in the real world for your awareness. 

Real-time Routing Applications in UWSN

• Natural Disaster Prevention (oil spils, tsunami, flood,etc.)
• Protection of Coastal Areas from Hazards
• Military-oriented Applications
• Enemy Movement in Underwater
• Defense System Surveillance
• Coalfields and Joint Intelligence
• Environment Monitoring for following use-cases
  • Underground Water Pipelines
  • Mining of Natural Resources
  • Study of Plastic Wreckage and Toxins
  • Control of Acidification Pollution

The goal of Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

The main objective of routing protocol is to select the optimal route from all available routes based on certain conditions. And, the optimized route needs to safely transfer the data from source to destination without undergoing any harmful activities.  

Routing in UWSNs  

From the above-specified objective of routing protocols itself, you can realize the intention of routing. Actually, routing is nothing but the transmission of data packets from one node to another through any type of communication link. In order to bring successful transmission, many routing protocols were designed were with/without the consideration of the node’s location. Basically, the Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks are categorized into the following types,

• Reactive Protocols
  • It is intended for dynamic environs where node instigate to find route for destination nodes
  • However, it support dynamic environs, it is not well-suited for UWSN due to high delay of route creation
• Geo-based Routing Protocols
  • It utilizes the node locations to create the route between source and destination
  • Also, addresses in what way the nodes positions are determined
• Proactive Protocols
  • It is the initial attempt to create routes which cause high overheads.
  • Though it causes overheads, it focus to reduce the data propagation delay
  • Also, the routes frequently changes due to nodes mobility / failure

Next, we can see that how the efficiency of the routing protocols is determined in various aspects. The best way to analyze the performance of routing protocols is a comparative study. By doing this, we can advantage and disadvantages over the different routing protocols. Below, we have compared 3 different protocols through some major routing attributes. 

Comparison of Routing Protocols in UWSNs

• Delay in Network Connection
  • Reactive – Maximum
  • Proactive – Minimum
  • Hybrid – Minimum
• Failure Reaction
  • Reactive – Fast
  • Proactive – Slow
  • Hybrid – Fast
• Finding of Routes
  • Reactive – Demand-based
  • Proactive – Periodical-based
  • Hybrid – Both
• Traffic Probability
  • Reactive – Greater
  • Proactive – Lower
  • Hybrid – Lower
• Data Management Needs
  • Reactive – Low
  • Proactive – High
  • Hybrid – Medium
• Periodical Updates
  • Reactive – Unavailable
  • Proactive – Available
  • Hybrid – Available
• Reconfiguration of Route
  • Reactive – Simple
  • Proactive – Tough
  • Hybrid – Simple
• Cost of Overhead
  • Reactive – Lower
  • Proactive – Higher
  • Hybrid – Medium

Furthermore, our experts have shared with you few significant routing issues in UWSNs. These issues are recognized as the most common problems with their description in routing techniques of UWSNs. Once if you are interested to know adaptive solutions for the problems then just communicate with us. 

Problem Descriptions for Routing in UWSNs

• Constrains of 3D Geo-based Routing
  • Infeasibility in local maxima recovery
  • Mandatorily need localization service for distributed nodes deployment
• Issues of Acoustic Communications
  • Occurrence of node mobility because of dynamic water current (<1m/s)
  • Minimum bandwidth (up to 100kbps)
  • High propagation latency (3 x 10³ m/s)
  • High energy requirements (-W)
• Incompatibility of Underground Sensors on Underwater Environs
  • No apt for bandwidth limited UWSNs
  • Happen more protocols overheads For instance: route management / flooding

For more benefits, we also included the other open research issues that so many scholars tried but still looking for more effective solutions. These issues are gathered by undertaking a complete survey on recent routing-related UWSN journal papers. Here, we have listed only very few issues and further, we also collected numerous research problems that scholars are currently demanding.  

Open Issues of Routing for UWSN

• Design techniques to accurately identify the link failure with respect to node mobility and battery drain
• Create routing protocols which are tolerant to discontinuous connectivity
• Design model which are appropriate to dynamic network communication in addition to simulation tools
• Essential to design techniques / algorithm for followings,
  • To manage network connections without instant retransmission
  • To lend loose or strict delay bounds in time-sensitive applications

Research Challenges of Routing Protocols in UWSN

From the above section, you can realize that routing is a challenging task to perform in UWSN. Therefore, one should take extra care and following things as a consideration while designing routing protocols. Further, our experts are ready to assist you in modeling routing protocols that meet your project expectations. So, let’s see the research challenges of routing protocols. 

• For real-time routing protocols, choose the designing techniques that consider constant water pressure, restricted bandwidth, water salinity, large propagation latency, impairment of channel fading, maximum bit error rate, etc.
• Model the routing protocols with the characteristics of fault tolerance, free of localization, reliability and scalability
• Mandatory to reduce the resource usages of sensors in the time establishing dense / harsh underwater environs 
• Mainly think through the node mobility in specific time for three dimensional underwater sensors
• Need to improve the battery recharge option with respect to water current
• Necessary to ignore the void areas while deploying sensors in underwater environment

No matter what the research issues are, the matter is how effectively you are going to solve those issues. For that, you have to wisely choose the routing protocols. In truth, our research team has come a crossed numerous routing-related projects in UWSNs, So, we know all smart approaches to recognize best-fitting routing protocols depend on your handpicked problems. 

Therefore, if you are looking for an expert’s guidance in selecting and analyzing routing protocols then you have the best choice of choosing our team. Here, we have given you a set of parameters that are very important to consider while routing protocol selection in UWSNs. 

How to choose the best routing protocol for UWSNs?

• Stability – Ability to support steadiness for varying network conditions
• Performance Metrics – Cost, latency, number of hops, throughput, etc.
• Source of Network Data – Neighboring node, all nodes, local data, nodes with routing, etc.
• Proactive Recover – Fast recovery of data / nodes from undesired network connectivity failure
• Fault Tolerance – Network capability to successfully transfer data even in the case of failure
• Precision and Simplicity – On using simple technique, the packets are needed to be transported productively
• Multipath Discovery – Collect all the possible routing paths
• Timing of Network Data Notifies – Network structure changes, load variation, periodic, continuous, etc.
• Secure Route Identification – Select the optimal routes from all available routing paths
• Simultaneous Multipath – Concurrently distribute the packets in multiple paths

In addition, we have also given you few core routing protocols based on the three main classifications of the routing process. Since you need all these three criteria for data transmission. We have already experienced the accurate results of all these protocols before creating this list for you in implementing research network security projects. So, it will be more useful for scholars who wish to employ the best Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks applications. 

Routing Protocols for UWSNs

• Energy-efficiency
  • Wake up / Sleep Routing
    • Active / Busy (Passive Wake-up Radios, Topology Management and Duty Cycling)
• Sender-oriented
  • Energy-based Routing
    • Energy information (MRP and ARP)
  • Geo-based Routing
    • Locality information (RMTG and RDBF)
    • Depth information (Hydrocast and VARP)
• Receiver-oriented
  • Energy-based Routing
    • Energy information (QELAR and E-PULRP)
  • Geo-based Routing
    • Depth information (H2-DAB, DS-DBR and DBR)

Additionally, we have also given you a few current routing protocols and algorithms which are largely used in recent UWSNs projects. We assure you that these protocols surely yield the best results for your projects. Further, we also support you in designing other upcoming routing techniques for efficient data transmission. 

Latest Routing Protocols for UWSNs

• Vector based
• Low Cost Clustering
• Adaptive Routing
• Depth based
• Energy-efficient based
• Direction Flooding based
• Hop-by-Hop Vector based
• Focused Beam based
• Reliable and Energy based
• Location-Aware Source
• Dynamic Addressing based (Hop-by-Hop)
• Sector based Routing (include destination location)
• Connectivity-oriented Traffic Aware Routing
• Traffic light-based Routing
• Shortest Path Routing
• Inter HAP-Satellite  Routing
• Source-based Multi-path

With an intention to obtain data reliability in the deep sea and surface sink communication, multi-hop communication is used. The actual objectives of multi-hop communication are to assure low delay, high energy efficiency, and high reliability in data sharing of underwater and seabeds. Overall, it enhances the performance of proposed routing schemes.    

Performance Analysis of Routing Protocols in UWSNs

Next, we can see the performance evaluation of routing protocols in UWSNs. In general, protocols are executed for different scenarios and states. So, it has various parameters such as node mobility, network capacity, reliability, localization, etc. to assess the efficiency. Some common techniques used for evaluating both underwater and terrestrial sensor networks are given as follows, 

• Direct real-environment deployment
• Numerical simulation
• Analytical modeling

In addition, we have listed some important parameters employed for assessing routing protocols in UWSNs. Further, it also includes the different attributes of parameters in various networking layers. Let’s have a look over them in the following,

• Latency
  • Calculate the amount of time spend in transferring the bits from source to destination  (based on node location and routing protocols)
    • Network Layer – routing technique, handover delay and IP mobility control
    • Data Link Layer – link scheduling, retransmission protocol, Handover delay and traffic control
    • PHY Layer – delay of propagation and signal processing
• Throughput
  • Compute total amount of packets processed and reached receiver in specific period of time (bits per second)
    • Network Layer – routing protocol and network topology
    • Data Link Layer – automated repeat request protocol and packet switching
    • PHY Layer – Bandwidth, network coding, multi-carrier modulation, spectrum and antenna technology
• Energy Utilization
  • Measure the total amount of energy spend on routing process
    • Network Layer – routing protocols
    • Data Link Layer – count of packet retransmission, frame length control and data forwarding
    • PHY Layer – interference, power control and channel state
• Reliability
  • Determine the total amount of packets successfully delivered at destination point
    • Network Layer – network structure
    • Data Link Layer – coding of error correction and packet forwarding
    • PHY Layer – path loss, channel state, interference and bit error rate

On the whole, we are pleased to say that we support you in your whole research journey ranges from research topic selection to thesis submission. Our experts are very friendly to assist you on the right track of your research Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks path until you reach your research goal line.