Internode Distance-Based Redundancy Reliable Transport in Underwater Sensor Networks

Abstract

Underwater communication is a very challenging topic. Protocols used in terrestrial sensor networks cannot be directly applied in the underwater world. High-bit error rate and large propagation delay make the design of transport protocols especially awkward. ARQ-based reliable transport schemes are not appropriate in underwater environments due to large propagation delay, low communication bandwidth, and high error probability. Thus, we focus on redundancy-based transport schemes in this paper. We first investigate three schemes that employ redundancy mechanisms at the bit and/or packet level to increase the reliability in a direct link scenario. Then, we show that the broadcast property of the underwater channel allows us to extend those schemes to a case with node cooperative communication. Based on our analysis, an adaptive redundancy transport protocol (ARRTP) for underwater sensor networks is proposed. We suggest an architecture for implementation. For two kinds of topologies, namely, regular and random, we show that ARRTP presents a better transmission success probability and energy efficiency tradeoff for single- and multihop transmissions. We also offer an integrated case study to show that ARRTP is not only supplying reliability but also has some positive effect in guiding the deployment of underwater sensor nodes.