Architecture of Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: A Survey

Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing interest in monitoring aqueous environments using Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASNs), which is considered as a novel tool in exploring ocean also in small aqueous environments such as lakes, rivers. Network topology is a crucial factor in determining energy consumption, capacity and reliability of a network, it's necessary for us to know the feasible architectures and their characteristics of UASNs. In this paper, we do a survey on the architecture of UASNs, and classify the architecture into three groups using the node characters as a rule. We also analyze the open questions should to be faced in further research works. The architecture of USANs would be important for application network design, topology control, communication protocols and related study.