Optimizing ODMRP for underwater networks

Underwater networks have attracted significant attention over the last few years. They can be used in scenarios like environmental monitoring and mine countermeasure but may also be part of modern marine warfare. A prominent example is Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) with multistatic sonars. These networks may be sparse with potentially long distances between single nodes such that direct communication is not always possible. Furthermore, long propagation delays and shadowzones have a negative impact on the communication channel. A solution to overcome these challenges is to realize a multi-hop network by using ad-hoc routing. A well known protocol from terrestrial networks is the On-Demand Multicast Routing-Protocol (ODMRP). In this paper, we present an optimization for ODMRP, named Route-Discovery-Suppression, to improve its performance for the deployment in underwater networks. We evaluate the performance through simulations in different scenarios and show its impact in comparison to other routing protocols.