Need and Role of Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

The field of underwater acoustic sensor networking is growing rapidly thanks to the key role it plays in many military and commercial applications. Among these are disaster prevention, tactical surveillance, offshore exploration, pollution monitoring and oceanographic data collection. Moreover, unmanned or autonomous underwater vehicles (UUVs, AUVs), equipped with sensors, will enable the exploration of natural undersea resources and gathering of scientific data in collaborative monitoring missions. Underwater acoustic networking is the enabling technology for these applications. The objective of this paper is to understand several fundamental key aspects of underwater acoustic communications. Different architectures for two-dimensional and three-dimensional underwater sensor networks are discussed, and the characteristics of the underwater channel are detailed. The main challenges for the development of efficient networking solutions posed by the underwater environment are detailed. This paper also presents a detailed explanation of the sensor networks used in tsunami detection. We then present an overview of the recent advances.