Analyzing Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Underwater sensor networks (UWSN) resemble terrestrial sensor networks in many aspects. However, the high propagation delay and limited bandwidth make terrestrial sensor network’s protocols unsuitable for UWSN. For instance, routing protocols proposed for terrestrial networks are not applicable in an underwater network. Therefore, enormous efforts have been made for designing efficient protocols while considering the characteristics of underwater communication. This article reviews state-of-the-art routing protocols proposed for UWSN. Major routing protocols are taken into account and each protocol is described in detail. Taxonomy of the routing protocols is presented where the protocols are categorized into four categories i.e. flooding based protocols, multipath based, cluster based and miscellaneous protocols.