Investigation of Oceanic Environment Using Large-Scale UWSN and UANETs

Abstract

Investigating coastal oceanic environment is of great interest in pollution monitoring, tactical surveillance applications, exploration of natural undersea resources and predicting wave tides. Deployment of underwater sensor networks for real time investigation is the major challenge. Acoustic communication intends to be an open solution for continuous wireless sensor network in underwater scenarios. In this paper large-scale underwater Sensor Networks (UWSN) and Underwater Ad-hoc Networks (UANETs) to explore the oceanic environment is proposed. A kong wobbler carrying base station with acoustic communication devices is considered, which locates the pre-deployed underwater sensor modules through acoustic communication. The sensor modules are installed with various sensors and video capturing devices to study the underwater resources as well as for surveillance needs for predicting the environmental conditions. The simulation results are encouraging as this approach is extremely helpful in surveillance as the intruders are tracked and real-time video streaming is done.