Smart Underwater Sensor Network GPRS Architecture for Marine Environments

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) has made it possible to explore different types of communication, such as underwater IoT (UIoT). This new paradigm allows the interconnection of ships, boats, coasts, objects in the sea, cameras, and animals that require constant monitoring. The use of sensors for environmental monitoring, tracking marine fauna and flora, and monitoring the health of aquifers requires the integration of heterogeneous technologies as well as wireless communication technologies. Aquatic mobile sensor nodes face various limitations, such as bandwidth, propagation distance, and data transmission delay issues. Owing to their versatility, wireless sensor networks support remote monitoring and surveillance. In this work, an architecture for a general packet radio service (GPRS) wireless sensor network is presented. The network is used to monitor the geographic position over the coastal area of the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed architecture integrates cellular technology and some ad hoc network configurations in a single device such that coverage is improved without significantly affecting the energy consumption, as shown in the results. The network coverage and energy consumption are evaluated by analyzing the attenuation in a proposed channel model and the autonomy of the electronic system, respectively.