Void Avoidance and Challenges in Underwater Wireless Sensor Network: A Review

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) is considered as a promising technology for
underwater data collection. The data collected serves as information for tactical monitoring, an
investigation of underwater resources, disaster prediction, and weather conditions forecast.
However, the underwater sensors are characterized by limited energy sources, low bandwidth
capacity, unstable transmitting Energy, and few memories. Such limitations have affected the
performance of underwater communications with sensors. A reasonable amount of energy is
depleted when it comes to sending and receiving packets in the acoustic environment. One of the
challenging issues in UWSN is the efficient routing of data packets from the high depth sensor
node to the sink node at the water surface with minimal energy consumption and a high delivery
ratio of data packets. The routing process enables efficient communication of the data collected
by the underwater sensor node. Therefore, several routing protocols have been developed and
proposed, which handles either void holes or unreliable next forwarder node selection. Some of
these solutions have not been comprehensively summarized to serve as a base and bearing for
research beginners. To this end, this paper qualitatively reviews proposed solutions including
void hole avoidance and next forwarding node selection techniques. Therefore, classification of
the void hole avoidance and next forwarding node selection techniques, which include pressurebased, beacon-based, and reliability energy-centric multi-metric-based techniques have been
carried out. Also, open research issues and future research directions are identified based on a
critical and qualitative assessment of literature for a researcher in this domain