A Survey of Routing Issues and Associated Protocols in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Underwater Wireless Sensor Network is newly emerging wireless technology in which small size sensors with limited energy, limited memory and bandwidth are deployed in deep sea water and various monitoring operation like tactical surveillance, environmental monitoring and data collection are performed through these tiny sensor. Underwater Wireless Sensor Network is used for exploration of underwater resources, oceanographic data collection, flood or disaster prevention, tactical surveillance system and unmanned underwater vehicles. Sensor node consist of small memory, central processing unit and antenna. Underwater network is much different from terrestrial sensor network as radio waves cannot be used in Underwater Wireless Sensor Network. Acoustic channels are used for communication in deep sea water. Acoustic Signals carries with itself many limitation. Such as Limited bandwidth, higher end to end delay, network path loss, higher propagation delay and dynamic topology. Usually these limitation results in higher energy consumption with less number of packets delivered. The main aim now a days is to operate sensor node having smaller battery for a longer time in network. This survey has discussed the state of the art Localization based and Localization free routing protocols. Routing associated issues in the area of Underwater Wireless Sensor Network has also been discussed.