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Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
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Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 17778

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Yunyoung Nam

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Soonchunhyang University, Asan, Korea
Interests: wireless sensor networks; ubiquitous computing; pattern recognition; wearable computing; cloud computing; biomedical signal processing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have attracted significant research attention recently, in both industry and academia. UWSNs are expected to enable various practical applications, such as real-time underwater sensing, sea-life monitoring, port surveillance, ocean mapping, subsea infrastructure inspection, wireless diver-to-diver communication, wireless diver/underwater vehicle communication, untethered sea exploration, subsea search-and-rescue operations, underwater wireless video feeds, and off-shore drilling monitoring. This Special Issue addresses all types of underwater wireless sensing, communication, networking and system designs.

Dr. Yunyoung Nam
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Underwater sensor nodes
  • Devices for underwater sensing
  • Underwater wireless sensor networks
  • Underwater ranging, localization and tracking
  • Underwater sensor networks communication
  • Underwater surveillance and monitoring
  • Databases and big data for underwater systems control
  • Underwater health monitoring
  • Underwater Internet for medical and healthcare applications

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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26 pages, 8572 KiB  
Article
Cross-Layer-Aided Opportunistic Routing for Sparse Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
by Danfeng Zhao, Guiyang Lun, Rui Xue and Yanbo Sun
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3205; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093205 - 05 May 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 1821
Abstract
Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have emerged as a promising technology to monitor and explore the oceans instead of traditional undersea wireline instruments. Traditional routing protocols are inefficient for UWSNs due to the specific nature of the underwater environment. In contrast, Opportunistic Routing [...] Read more.
Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have emerged as a promising technology to monitor and explore the oceans instead of traditional undersea wireline instruments. Traditional routing protocols are inefficient for UWSNs due to the specific nature of the underwater environment. In contrast, Opportunistic Routing (OR) protocols establish an online route for each transmission, which can well adapt with time-varying underwater channel. Cross-layer design is an effective approach to combine the metrics from different layers to optimize an OR routing in UWSNs. However, typical cross-layer OR routing protocols that are designed for UWSNs suffer from congestion problem at high traffic loads. In this paper, a Cross-Layer-Aided Opportunistic Routing Protocol (CLOR) is proposed to reduce the congestion in multi-hop sparse UWSNs. The CLOR consists of a negotiation phase and transmission phase. In the negotiation phase, the cross-layer information in fuzzy logic is utilized to attain an optimal forwarder node. In the transmission phase, to improve the transmission performance, a burst transmission strategy with network coding is exploited. Finally, we perform simulations of the proposed CLOR protocol in a specific sea region. Simulation results show that CLOR significantly improves the network performances at various traffic rates compared to existing protocols. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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21 pages, 1066 KiB  
Communication
Study of the Performance of DSSS UAC System Depending on the System Bandwidth and the Spreading Sequence
by Iwona Kochanska, Roman Salamon, Jan H. Schmidt and Aleksander M. Schmidt
Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2484; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072484 - 02 Apr 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2120
Abstract
A signal transmitted in an Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) system operating in a shallow-water channel suffers from strong time dispersion due to multipath propagation. This causes the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) observed in the received signal, which significantly limits the communication system’s reliability and [...] Read more.
A signal transmitted in an Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) system operating in a shallow-water channel suffers from strong time dispersion due to multipath propagation. This causes the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) observed in the received signal, which significantly limits the communication system’s reliability and transmission rate. In such propagation conditions, the Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) method is one of the solutions that make reliable data transmission possible. In systems with one-to-one communication, it ensures communication with a satisfactory Bit Error Rate (BER). Additionally, it makes it possible to implement the Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) protocol in underwater acoustic networks. This paper presents the results of simulation and experimental communication tests on a DSSS-based UAC system using three types of spreading sequence, namely m-sequences, Kasami codes and Gold codes, and occupying different bandwidths from 1 kHz to 8 kHz around a carrier frequency equal to 30 kHz. The UAC channel was simulated by impulse responses calculated by the virtual sources method and the UAC chanel models available in the Watermark simulator. The experimental tests were conducted in a model pool. Based on the obtained results, a transmission rate was estimated, which is possible to achieve in strong multipath propagation conditions, assuming reliability expressed as BER less than 0.001. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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19 pages, 763 KiB  
Article
Packet Flow Based Reinforcement Learning MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks
by Ibrahim B. Alhassan and Paul D. Mitchell
Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2284; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072284 - 24 Mar 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1956
Abstract
Medium access control (MAC) is one of the key requirements in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). For a MAC protocol to provide its basic function of efficient sharing of channel access, the highly dynamic underwater environment demands MAC protocols to be adaptive as [...] Read more.
Medium access control (MAC) is one of the key requirements in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). For a MAC protocol to provide its basic function of efficient sharing of channel access, the highly dynamic underwater environment demands MAC protocols to be adaptive as well. Q-learning is one of the promising techniques employed in intelligent MAC protocol solutions, however, due to the long propagation delay, the performance of this approach is severely limited by reliance on an explicit reward signal to function. In this paper, we propose a restructured and a modified two stage Q-learning process to extract an implicit reward signal for a novel MAC protocol: Packet flow ALOHA with Q-learning (ALOHA-QUPAF). Based on a simulated pipeline monitoring chain network, results show that the protocol outperforms both ALOHA-Q and framed ALOHA by at least 13% and 148% in all simulated scenarios, respectively. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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37 pages, 2333 KiB  
Article
Double-Scale Adaptive Transmission in Time-Varying Channel for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks
by Yi Cen, Mingliu Liu, Deshi Li, Kaitao Meng and Huihui Xu
Sensors 2021, 21(6), 2252; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21062252 - 23 Mar 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2506
Abstract
The communication channel in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) is time-varying due to the dynamic environmental factors, such as ocean current, wind speed, and temperature profile. Generally, these phenomena occur with a certain regularity, resulting in a similar variation pattern inherited in the [...] Read more.
The communication channel in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) is time-varying due to the dynamic environmental factors, such as ocean current, wind speed, and temperature profile. Generally, these phenomena occur with a certain regularity, resulting in a similar variation pattern inherited in the communication channels. Based on these observations, the energy efficiency of data transmission can be improved by controlling the modulation method, coding rate, and transmission power according to the channel dynamics. Given the limited computational capacity and energy in underwater nodes, we propose a double-scale adaptive transmission mechanism for the UASNs, where the transmission configuration will be determined by the predicted channel states adaptively. In particular, the historical channel state series will first be decomposed into large-scale and small-scale series and then be predicted by a novel k-nearest neighbor search algorithm with sliding window. Next, an energy-efficient transmission algorithm is designed to solve the problem of long-term modulation and coding optimization. In particular, a quantitative model is constructed to describe the relationship between data transmission and the buffer threshold used in this mechanism, which can then analyze the influence of buffer threshold under different channel states or data arrival rates theoretically. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the proposed schemes, and results show that they can achieve good performance in terms of channel prediction and energy consumption with moderate buffer length. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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25 pages, 4110 KiB  
Article
Energy-Efficient Depth-Based Opportunistic Routing with Q-Learning for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks
by Yongjie Lu, Rongxi He, Xiaojing Chen, Bin Lin and Cunqian Yu
Sensors 2020, 20(4), 1025; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20041025 - 14 Feb 2020
Cited by 39 | Viewed by 3503
Abstract
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have aroused increasing interest of many researchers in industry, military, commerce and academe recently. Due to the harsh underwater environment, energy efficiency is a significant theme should be considered for routing in UWSNs. Underwater positioning is also a [...] Read more.
Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have aroused increasing interest of many researchers in industry, military, commerce and academe recently. Due to the harsh underwater environment, energy efficiency is a significant theme should be considered for routing in UWSNs. Underwater positioning is also a particularly tricky task since the high attenuation of radio-frequency signals in UWSNs. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient depth-based opportunistic routing algorithm with Q-learning (EDORQ) for UWSNs to guarantee the energy-saving and reliable data transmission. It combines the respective advantages of Q-learning technique and opportunistic routing (OR) algorithm without the full-dimensional location information to improve the network performance in terms of energy consumption, average network overhead and packet delivery ratio. In EDORQ, the void detection factor, residual energy and depth information of candidate nodes are jointly considered when defining the Q-value function, which contributes to proactively detecting void nodes in advance, meanwhile, reducing energy consumption. In addition, a simple and scalable void node recovery mode is proposed for the selection of candidate set so as to rescue packets that are stuck in void nodes unfortunately. Furthermore, we design a novel method to set the holding time for the schedule of packet forwarding base on Q-value so as to alleviate the packet collision and redundant transmission. We conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithm and compare it with other three routing algorithms on Aqua-sim platform (NS2). The results show that the proposed algorithm significantly improve the performance in terms of energy efficiency, packet delivery ratio and average network overhead without sacrificing too much average packet delay. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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Review

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21 pages, 950 KiB  
Review
Systematic Review of Fault Tolerant Techniques in Underwater Sensor Networks
by Lauri Vihman, Maarja Kruusmaa and Jaan Raik
Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3264; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093264 - 08 May 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2851
Abstract
Sensor networks provide services to a broad range of applications ranging from intelligence service surveillance to weather forecasting. While most of the sensor networks are terrestrial, Underwater Sensor Networks (USN) are an emerging area. One of the unavoidable and increasing challenges for modern [...] Read more.
Sensor networks provide services to a broad range of applications ranging from intelligence service surveillance to weather forecasting. While most of the sensor networks are terrestrial, Underwater Sensor Networks (USN) are an emerging area. One of the unavoidable and increasing challenges for modern USN technology is tolerating faults, i.e., accepting that hardware is imperfect, and coping with it. Fault Tolerance tends to have more impact in underwater than in terrestrial environment as the latter is generally more forgiving. Moreover, reaching the malfunctioning devices for replacement and maintenance under water is harder and more costly. The current paper is the first to provide an overview of fault-tolerant, particularly cross-layer fault-tolerant, techniques in USNs. In the paper, we present a systematic survey of the techniques, introduce a taxonomy of the Fault Tolerance tasks, present a categorized list of articles, and list the open research issues within the area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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Other

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14 pages, 6225 KiB  
Letter
Short-Range Water Temperature Profiling in a Lake with Coastal Acoustic Tomography
by Haocai Huang, Yong Guo, Guangming Li, Kaneko Arata, Xinyi Xie and Pan Xu
Sensors 2020, 20(16), 4498; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20164498 - 12 Aug 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2187
Abstract
Coastal acoustic tomography (CAT), as an innovative technology, can perform water temperature measurements both in horizontal and vertical slices. Investigations on vertical slice observations are significantly fewer in number than horizontal observations due to difficulties in multi-path arrival peak identification. In this study, [...] Read more.
Coastal acoustic tomography (CAT), as an innovative technology, can perform water temperature measurements both in horizontal and vertical slices. Investigations on vertical slice observations are significantly fewer in number than horizontal observations due to difficulties in multi-path arrival peak identification. In this study, a two-station sound transmission experiment is carried out in Thousand-Island Lake, Hangzhou, China, to acquire acoustic data for water temperature profiling. Time windows, determined by range-independent ray simulation, are used to identify multi-path arrival peaks and obtain corresponding sound wave travel times. Special attention is paid to travel time correction, whose errors are caused by position drifting by more than 2 m of moored stations. The sound speed and temperature profiling are divided into four layers and are calculated by regularized inversion. Results show a good consistency with conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) measurements. The root mean square error (RMSE) of water temperature is 0.3494, 0.6838, 1.0236 and 1.0985 °C for layer 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively. The fluctuations of measurement are further smoothed by the moving average, which decreases the RMSE of water temperature to 0.2858, 0.4742, 0.7719 and 0.9945 °C, respectively. This study illustrates the feasibility and high accuracy of the coastal acoustic tomography method in short-range water temperature measurement. Furthermore, 3D water temperature field profiling can be performed with combined analyzing in horizontal and vertical slices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks)
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