Opportunistic Underwater Routing Protocols: A Survey

Abstract

Underwater Acoustics Sensor Networks (UASNs) play a significant role in the different underwater applications. Some underwater applications include underwater environment monitoring, mine detection, pollution monitoring, etc. UASNs exhibit several challenges like node movement, changes in link quality between nodes, low bandwidth, high bit-error rate, and high energy consumption. These challenges in UASNs make data delivery unreliable during routing. One of the solutions to achieve better performance during routing is using an opportunistic routing approach. In the opportunistic routing, the sender will forward the data to the set of neighbors so that at least a neighbor can receive and forward the data. Evaluating the neighboring nodes, selecting the set of the neighbors, and coordinating among the selected nodes to forward the received data is the significant steps in opportunistic routing. Thus, we consider the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) approach to select the best next-hops during routing. Therefore, we are making a detailed survey on protocols that apply TOPSIS to evaluate neighboring nodes’ multiple attributes. Then we discuss various clustering techniques used in the selection of the best next-hops. Finally, we discuss methods used to compute hold time to achieve coordination between cluster nodes. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.