Shallow Water Acoustic Networks (SWANs)
Kishan R Motiyani
Student(BE Computer)
B.V.U.C.O.E, Pune
(kmotiyani@gmail.com)
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Shallow water acoustic networks are generally
formed by acoustically connected ocean bottom
sensor nodes, autonomous underwater vehicles
(AUVs), and surface stations that serve as gateways
and provide radio communication links to on-shore
stations. The QoS of such networks is limited by the
low bandwidth of acoustic transmission channels,
high latency resulting from the slow propagation of
sound, and elevated noise levels in some
environments. The long-term goal in the design of
underwater acoustic networks is to provide for a self-
configuring network of distributed nodes with
network links that automatically adapt to the
environment through selection of the optimum system
parameters. Here considers several aspects in the
design of shallow water acoustic networks that
maximize throughput and reliability while
minimizing power consumption
And In the last two decades, underwater acoustic
communications has experienced significant
progress. The traditional approach for ocean-bottom
or ocean-column monitoring is to deploy
oceanographic sensors, record the data, and recover
the instruments. But this approach failed in real-time
monitoring. The ideal solution for real-time
monitoring of selected ocean areas for long periods
of time is to connect various instruments through
wireless links within a network structure. And the
Basic underwater acoustic networks are formed by
establishing bidirectional acoustic communication
between nodes such as autonomous underwater
vehicles (AUVs) and fixed sensors. The network is
then connected to a surface station, which can further
be connected to terrestrial networks such as the
Internet.
Keywords
Under water sensor network, acoustic network,
acoustic communicat ion architectures.
1. INTRODUCTION
Underwater networks of sensors have the potential to
enable unexplo red applications and to enhance our
ability to observe and predict the ocean. Unmanned
or Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (UUVs,
AUVs), equipped with underwater sensors, are also
envisioned to find application in exp loration of
natural undersea resources and gathering of scientific
data in collaborative monitoring missions. These
potential applications will be made viable by
enabling communications among underwater devices.
Under Water Acoustic Sensor Networks (UW-ASNs)
will consist of sensors and vehicles deployed
underwater and networked via acoustic links to
perform collaborative monitoring tasks. Underwater
acoustic sensor networks can enable a broad range of
applications, including:
• Ocean Sampling Networks. Networks of sensors
and AUVs can perform synoptic, cooperative
adaptive sampling of the 3D coastal ocean
environment.
• Environmental Monitoring. UW-ASN can
perform pollution monitoring (chemical, b iological,
and nuclear), monitoring of ocean currents and
winds, imp roved weather forecast, detecting climate
change, understanding and predicting the effect of
human activities on marine ecosystems, and
biological monitoring such as tracking of fishes or
micro -organisms.
Undersea Expl orations. Underwater sensor
networks can help detect underwater oilfields or
reservoirs, determine routes for laying undersea
cables, and assist in exploration for valuable
minerals.
• Disaster Prevention. Sensor networks that measure
seismic act ivity fro m remote locations can provide
tsunami warnings to coastal areas, or study the effects
of submarine earthquakes (seaquakes).

• Assisted Navig ation. Sensors can be used to
identify hazards on the seabed, locate dangerous
rocks or shoals in shallow waters, mooring positions,
submerged wrecks, and to perform bathymetry
profiling.
• Distri buted Tactical Surveillance. AUVs and
fixed underwater sensors can collaboratively monitor
areas for surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting, and
intrusion detection.
• Mine Reconnaissance. The simultaneous operation
of multip le AUVs with acoustic and optical sensors
can be used to perform rapid environmental
assessment and detect minelike objects.
Acoustic communications are the typical physical
layer technology in underwater networks. In fact,
radio waves propagate at long distances through
conductive salty water only at extra low frequencies
(30 − 300Hz), wh ich require large antennae and high
transmission power. For example, the Berkeley
MICA 2 Motes, a popular experimental platform in
the sensor networking community, have been
reported to reach an underwater transmission range of
120 cm at 433M Hz in experiments performed at the
University of Southern California. Optical waves do
not suffer fro m such high attenuation but are affected
by scattering. Furthermore, transmitting optical
signals requires high precision in pointing the narrow
laser beams. Thus, links in underwater networks are
typically based on acoustic wireless communications.
The traditional approach for ocean-bottom or ocean-
column monitoring is to deploy underwater sensors
that record data during the monitoring mission, and
then recover the instruments. This approach has
several disadvantages:
• No real-time monitoring. The recorded data
cannot be accessed until the instruments are
recovered, which may happen several months after
the beginning of the monitoring mission.
• No on-line system reconfigurati on. Interaction
between onshore control systems and the monitoring
instruments is not possible, which impedes any
adaptive tuning or reconfiguration of the system.
• No failure detection. If failures or
misconfigurations occur, it may not be possible to
detect them before the instruments are recovered.
• Li mited Storage Capacity. The amount of data
that can be recorded by every sensor during the
monitoring mission is limited to the capacity of the
onboard storage devices.
All of the above disadvantages can be overcome by
connecting untethered underwater instruments by
means of wireless links that rely on acoustic
communicat ions.
Although there exist many recently developed
network protocols for wireless sensor networks, the
unique characteristics of the underwater acoustic
communicat ion channel, such as limited capacity and
high and variable propagation delays , require very
efficient and reliab le new data commun ication
protocols. Major challenges in the design of
underwater acoustic networks are:
• The available bandwidth is severely limited;
• The underwater channel is severely impaired,
especially due to mu ltipath and fading;
• Propagation delay is five orders of magnitude
higher than in Rad io Frequency (RF) terrestrial
channels, and variable;
• High bit error rates and temporary losses of
connectivity (shadow zones) can be experienced;
• Battery power is limited and usually batteries can
not be recharged, also because solar energy cannot be
exploited;
• Underwater sensors are prone to failures because of
fouling and corrosion. In this survey, we discuss
different communication architectures for underwater
sensor networks as well as the factors that influence
underwater network design.
2. Shallow Water Acoustic Network
Communication Architectures:
Two-di mensional UWANs for ocean bottom
monitoring. These are constituted by sensor nodes
that are anchored to the bottom of the ocean. Typical
applications may be environ mental monitoring, or
monitoring of underwater p lates in tectonics.
Three-di mensional UWANs for ocean col umn
monitoring. These include networks of sensors
whose depth can be controlled, and may be used for
surveillance applicat ions or monitoring of ocean
phenomena (ocean bio-geo-chemical processes, water
streams, pollution, etc).
Three-di mensional networks of Autonomous
Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). These networks
include fixed portions composed of anchored sensors
and mobile portions constituted by autonomous
vehicles.
Fig.1-Two-di mensional underwater Sensor
Networks
A reference architecture for two-dimensional
underwater networks is shown in the figure above. A
group of sensor nodes are anchored to the bottom of
the ocean with deep ocean anchors. By means of
wireless acoustic links, underwater sensor nodes are
interconnected to one or more underwater sinks (uw-
sinks), which are network devices in charge of
relaying data fro m the ocean bottom network to a
surface station. To achieve this objective, uw-sinks
are equipped with two acoustic transceivers, namely
a vertical and a horizontal transceiver. The
horizontal transceiver is used by the uw-sink to
communicate with the sensor nodes in order to: i)
send commands and configuration data to the sensors
(uw-sink to sensors); ii) collect monitored data
(sensors to uw-sink). The vertical link is used by the
uw-sinks to relay data to a surface station. Vert ical
transceivers must be long range transceivers for deep
water applications as the ocean can be as deep as 10
km. The surface station is equipped with an acoustic
transceiver that is able to handle mu ltiple parallel
communicat ions with the deployed uw-sinks. It is
also endowed with a long range RF and/or satellite
transmitter to co mmunicate with the onshore sink
(os-sink) and/or to a surface sink (s-sink).
Sensors can be connected to uw-sinks via direct
lin ks or through mu lti-hop paths. In the former case,
each sensor directly sends the gathered data to the
selected uw-sink. This is the simplest way to network
sensors, but it may not be the most energy efficient,
since the sink may be far fro m the node and the
power necessary to transmit may decay with powers
greater than two of the distance.
Fig.2- Three-di mensional underwater Sensor
Network
Fu rthermore, direct links are very likely to reduce
the network throughput because of increased acoustic
interference due to high transmission power. In case
of mu lti-hop paths, as in terrestrial sensor networks,
the data produced by a source sensor is relayed by
intermediate sensors until it reaches the uw-sink. This
results in energy savings and increased network
capacity, but increases the complexity of the routing
functionality as well. In fact, every network device
usually takes part in a collaborative process whose
objective is to diffuse topology information such that
efficient and loop free routing decisions can be made
at each intermed iate node. This process involves
signaling and computation. Since, as discussed
above, energy and capacity are precious resources in
underwater environments, in UW-ASNs the objective
is to deliver event features by exploiting mult i-hop
paths and minimizing the signaling overhead
necessary to construct underwater paths at the same
time.
Three dimensional underwater networks are used to
detect and observe phenomena that can not be
adequately observed by means of ocean bottom
sensor nodes, i.e., to perfo rm cooperative sampling
of the 3D ocean environment. In three-dimensional
underwater networks, sensor nodes float at different
depths in order to observe a given
phenomenon. One possible solution would be to
attach each uw-sensor node to a surface buoy, by
means of wires whose length can be regulated so as
to adjust the depth of each sensor node. However,
although this solution allows easy and quick
deployment
of the sensor network, mult iple floating buoys may
obstruct ships navigating on the surface, or they can
be easily detected and deactivated by enemies in
militarysettings.

For these reasons, a different approach can be to

anchor sensor devices to the bottom of the ocean. In
this architecture, depicted in the figure above, each
sensor is anchored to the ocean bottom and equipped
with a floating buoy that can be inflated by a pump.
The buoy pushes the sensor towards the ocean
surface. The depth of the sensor can then be regulated
by adjusting the length of the wire that connects the
sensor to the anchor, by means of an electronically
controlled engine that resides on the sensor.

Many challenges arise with such an architecture, that

need to be solved in order to enable 3D monitoring,
including:
Sensing coverage. Sensors should collaboratively
regulate their depth in order to achieve full colu mn
coverage, according to their sensing ranges. Hence, it
must be possible to obtain sampling of the desired
phenomenon at all depths.
Communication coverage. Since in 3D underwater
networks there is no notion of uw-sink, sensors
should be able to relay information to the surface
station via mult i-hop paths. Thus, network devices
should coordinate their depths such a way that the
network topology is always connected, i.e., at least
one path from every sensor to the surface station
always exists.
Sensor Networks with Autonomous Underwater
Vehicles(AUVs)
Fig-3 Three-Dimensional Sensor Network with
AUVs
Adapti ve sampling. Th is includes control strategies
to command the mobile vehicles to places where their
data will be most useful. This approach is also known
as adaptive sampling and has been proposed in
pioneering monitoring missions. For examp le, the
density of sensor nodes can be adaptively increased
in a given area when a higher sampling rate is needed
for a g iven mon itored phenomenon.
Self-Configuration. This includes control procedures
to automatically detect connectivity holes due to node
failures and request the intervention of an AUV.
AUVs can either be used to deploy new sensors or as
relay nodes to restore connectivity.

AUVs can function without tethers, cables, or remote 3. UNDERWATER ACOUSTIC

control, and thus have a multitude of applications in
oceanography, environmental mon itoring, and SENSOR NETWORKS: DESIGN
underwater resource study. Previous experimental CHALLENGES
work has shown the feasibility of relatively
inexpensive AUV submarines equipped with mult iple In this section, we itemize the main differences
underwater sensors that can reach any depth in the between terrestrial and underwater sensor networks,
ocean Hence, they can be used to enhance the detail the key challenges in underwater
capabilit ies of underwater sensor networks in many communicat ions that influence protocol development,
ways. The integration and enhancement of fixed and give motivations for a cross -layer design
sensor networks with AUVs is an almost unexplo red approach to imp rove the efficiency of the
research area which requires new network communicat ion process in the challenging
coordination algorith ms, such as: underwater
environment.

Differences with Terrestrial Sensor
Networks
The main differences between terrestrial and
underwater sensor networks can be outlined as
follows:
• Cost. While terrestrial sensor nodes are expected to
become increasingly inexpensive, underwater s ensors
are expensive devices. This is especially due to the
more co mplex underwater transceivers and to the
hardware protection needed in the extreme
underwater environment.
• Depl oyment. While terrestrial sensor networks are
densely deployed, in underwater, the deployment is
generally more sparse.
• Power. The power needed for acoustic underwater
communicat ions is higher than in terrestrial radio
communicat ions due to higher distances and to more
complex signal processing at the receivers to
compensate for the impairments of the channel.
• Memory. While terrestrial sensor nodes have very
limited
storage capacity, uw-sensors may need to be able to
do some data caching as the underwater channel may
be intermittent.
• Spatial Correlati on. While the readings from
terrestrial sensors are often correlated, this is more
unlikely to happen in underwater networks due to the
higher distance among sensors.
Underwater acoustic communications are mainly
influenced by path loss, noise, multi-path, Doppler
spread, and high and variable propagation delay. All
these factors determine the temporal and spatial
variability of the acoustic channel, and make the
available bandwidth of the UnderWater Acoustic
channel (UW-A) limited and dramatically dependent
on both range and frequency. Long-range systems
that operate over several tens of kilo meters may have
a bandwidth of only a few kHz, while a short-range
system operating over several tens of meters may
have more than a hundred kHz bandwidth. In both
cases these factors lead to low bit rate.
Hereafter we analyze the factors that influence
acoustic communications in order to state the
challenges posed by the underwater channels for
underwater sensor networking. These include:
Path loss
Attenuati on. Is main ly provoked by absorption due
to conversion of acoustic energy into heat, which
increases with distance and frequency. It is also
caused by scattering an reverberation (on rough
ocean surface and bottom), refraction, and dispersion
(due to the displacement of the reflection point
caused by wind on the surface). Water depth plays a
key role in determining the attenuation.
Geometric Spreading. Th is refers to the spreading
of sound energy as a result of the expansion of the
wavefronts. It increases with the propagation distance
and is independent of frequency. There are two
common kinds of geometric spreading: spherical
(omn i-d irectional point source), and cylindrical
(horizontal rad iation only).
Noise
Man made noise. This is mainly caused by
mach inery noise (pumps, reduction gears, power
plants, etc.), and shipping activity (hull fouling,
animal life on hull, cav itation), especially in areas
encumbered with heavy vessel traffic.
Ambient Noise. Is related to hydrodynamics
(movement of water including tides, current, storms,
wind, rain, etc.), seismic and biological phenomena.
Multi-path
Multi-path propagation may be responsible for severe
degradation of the acoustic communication signal,
since it generates Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI).
The mu lti-path geometry depends on the link
configuration. Vertical channels are characterized by
litt le time dispersion, whereas horizontal channels
may have ext remely long mult i-path spreads.
The extent of the spreading is a strong function of
depth and the distance between transmitter and
receiver.
High delay and del ay variance
The propagation speed in the UW-A channel is five
orders of magnitude lower than in the radio channel.
This large propagation delay (0.67 s/km) can reduce
the throughput of the system considerably.
The very high delay variance is even more harmful
for efficient protocol design, as it prevents from
accurately estimating the round trip time (RTT),
which is the key parameter for many common
communicat ion protocols.
Doppler s pread
The Doppler frequency spread can be significant in
UW-A channels, causing a degradation in the
performance of digital co mmun ications:
transmissions at a high data rate cause many adjacent
symbols to interfere at thereceiver, requiring
sophisticated signal processing to deal with the
generated ISI.
The Doppler spreading generates: i) a simple
frequency translation, which is relat ively easy for a
receiver to co mpensate for; ii) a continuous spreading
of frequencies, wh ich constitutes a non-shifted signal,
which is mo re difficu lt for a receiver to compensate
for.
If a channel has a Doppler spread with bandwidth B
and a signal has symbol duration T, then there are
approximately BT uncorrelated samples of its
complex envelope. When BT is much less than unity,
the channel is said to be under spread and the effects
of the Doppler fading can be ignored, wh ile, if
greater than unity, it is overspread.
In the above sections 1, 2 and 3 of paper the
introduction, commun ication architectures and design
challenges of the under water acoustic network are
discussed. Now in the further section 4 of the paper
some technologies for real-time monitoring of
SWANs are discussed.
4. OASIS - Ocean Acquisition System for
Inte rdisciplinary Science
The importance of time series in oceanographic
research is clear. Time series measurements of
physical and meteorological properties, currently
taken throughout the globe, have allowed
investigators to resolve the important scales of
oceanic and atmospheric variability. With a few
exceptions the current time series are primarily
physical in nature (i.e., temperature). Biological and
chemical oceanographers are now looking to
continuous observations of biological and chemical
properties so they can also determine the spectrum of
variability in these fields and when taken
concurrently with the physical and meteorological
observations determine the relation to climate and
ocean variability. Spatial coverage will ult imately
come fro m observations made fro m space, but high-
frequency temporal and added vertical coverage will
need to come fro m moorings and drifters with arrays
of in-situ sensors. The paucity of biological and
chemical time series has been due, in part, to the lack
of this type of instrumentation, however, increased
effort has recently been placed on the development of
chemical and bio-optical instrumentation for the
collection of these time series. Realizing that
advances in ocean sciences are limited by the lack of
instrumentation and systems capable of collecting
these time series, the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute (MBARI) has established a
vigorous developmental program geared at making
these observations possible.
Objectives
The init ial scientific and technical objectives were:
1) Establish a platform for the deployment of a set of
unattended sensors and samplers.
2) Design a general purpose controller that collects
data from scientific instrumentation via mult iple
interfaces and then telemeters the information real-
time.
3) Make continuous observations of physical,
chemical and biological properties in Monterey Bay
and the associated coastal central California
ecosystem so as to describe time-vary ing aspects with
increased resolution and over long periods of time.
4) Contribute to the improvement of mooring and
unattended sensor technology, with emphasis on
biological and chemical properties.
5) Provide groundtruthing for properties sensed from
space.
Software data files are concatenated into files that span the
entire deployment period.
There are two major software efforts for the OASIS
project, on the mooring and on shore. On the mooring 5. Conclusion
the programs running on the 87C196 are written in C.
The core of the code is a mult itasking scheduler that In this paper represented the state of art in shallow
controls wake up and interfaces with a series of water acoustic networks with its application,
drivers. There are drivers for the user interface, disadvantages, communication architectures and also
packet radio and each instrument. In this sense the some design challenges of acoustic water
programming is modular, so that if a new instrument communicat ion. In the last section of the paper also
is to be added, a new driver is developed and added discussed ocean acquisition system for inter
to a table. In addition each driver has a generic set of disciplinary science for real time monitoring
parameters. There are a set of default parameters for developed by Monterey Bay Aquariu m Research
each driver that are called fro m a table when the Institute (MBARI).
system boots or resets and these can be modified
through the user interface either direct ly or over the
packet radio link. The current C code occupies 25K Acknowledgme nt
of the available 32K of EPROM space. A significant
aspect of the software is that it allows users to
directly connect to serial devices via the user I express my sincere thanks to Prof. Suhas Patil
interface. (H.O.D of Co mputer Engineering Depart ment,
B.V.U.C.O.E, pune) and Prof. P.D.joshi (lect. of
Co mputer Engineering Depart ment, B.V.U.C.O.E,
A typical set of operations is as follows. The clock pune) for their kind co-operation and guidance.
wakes up the controller at a predetermined time. The
scheduler starts the drivers that are on its list and then
waits until they return with a task completed
message. Once all tasks are completed the scheduler
6. References
requests that the clock put it to sleep and wake it up
for its next schedule of tasks. One particular task  http://www.ece.gatech.edu
involves communication between a computer on  http://www.mit.edu
shore and the controller. Currently the controller  http://www.nopp.uconn.edu
listens for the remote connection for twenty seconds  http://www.mbari.org
once every ten minutes (under software control).  http://www.ausi.org
Once communication is es tablished the on shore
computer requests all data since the previous request
for data. The data from the instruments are
uuencoded by the controller software to reduce the
size of the files and therefore reduce storage and
radio transmission time.

The collection of data fro m shore is automated by

software running on a Hewlett-Packard wo rkstation.
The software is combination of C code, UNIX shell
scripts and UNIX cron jobs. A cron job is in itiated
once an hour on the hour to request data, through
shell scripts, fro m n (maximu m nu mber has been four
when a drifter has been deployed) controllers
deployed in Monterey Bay. The shell scripts request
data fro m the controllers and then initiate a series of
C programs that extract and decode the data files
These programs apply calibrations and append the
data to daily files ASCII in instrument-specific
directories. Each file has a header that describes the
contents of the file. Once daily, during off hours, the