Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSN): Challenges and Advances in Routing Protocols

Underwater wireless sensing network has been under the lights of research for decades now. Key reasons for UWSN being in research trend are innovation-driven issues, increased environmental and economic demands, and technology improvements. UWSN has many benefits to offer such as remote monitoring and data collection, environmental protection, enhanced security, resource management, disaster prevention and management etc. It has many applications such as tactical surveillance, seismic monitoring, assisted navigations, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration and ocean monitoring, ocean resource management, underwater device maintenance, under sea explorations, advance military capabilities, mine reconnaissance, etc. All these applications need communication between devices installed under waterbodies, which works on communication protocols. Due to unusual characteristics of underwater it is difficult to maintain the designed network or protocol for that matter. This article reviews all the possible categorizations of UWSN routing protocols along with their effectiveness in underwater routing methods.