A Comprehensive Survey of the Recently Proposed Localization Protocols for Underwater Sensor Networks

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) offer a huge number of applications, most of which require tagging the sensed data with location information. This makes localization algorithms an essential part of UWSN design. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the recently proposed literature on localization in UWSNs. The surveyed algorithms are evaluated based on a wide-ranging set of parameters which constitute the elementary features of a localization algorithm. Moreover, in order to familiarize the readers with the basic design of the surveyed algorithms, brief description of the mode of operations of each algorithm is presented along with its strengths and weaknesses. The algorithms are divided into two categories based on their computational design i.e., centralized and distributed. Each category is further subdivided into the algorithms that consider node mobility, and those that do not. Towards the end, we present our view on the future research directions in the area of localization in UWSNs.

Keywords

• Localization survey
• underwater sensor networks
• underwater acoustic channel
• underwater optical channel
• target tracking