Routing in multi-modal underwater networks: A throughput-optimal approach

Abstract

While acoustic signals are still the main communication means under water, other technologies are being developed, e.g., based on optical and radio-frequency electromagnetic waves. Each technology has its own advantages and drawbacks to trade off, e.g., communication range vs. bit rate. Recently, new approaches are emerging to leverage the advantages of several underwater technologies by incorporating them in a multi-modal communication system. In this paper, we address a fundamental part of these multi-modal systems by proposing a novel routing protocol for networks of multi-modal nodes. Our protocol makes distributed optimal and fair decisions about the per-link flow, prevents bottlenecks, and allows simultaneous transmissions using multiple technologies in order to advance a packet towards its destination. We analyze the performance of our protocol via model-based simulations and compare it to benchmark results. Our results show that our protocol successfully leverages all technologies to deliver data, even in the presence of imperfect topology information.

Opportunistic Routing for Opto-Acoustic Internet of Underwater Things

“…In [5], [6], proposed protocols follow a traditional unicast routing approach which adapts shortest path algorithms to find paths with minimum distance/error/power consumption or maximum rate. In [17], Diamant et al propose a routing protocol for multi-modal underwater systems that incorporate optic and acoustic systems to leverage the advantages of both. The proposed routing technique makes distributed decisions on the per-link flow, avoids bottlenecks, and allows simultaneous acoustic and optical transmissions to forward packets towards the destination.…”

“…where N i sd is the broadcast ExNT given in (17). 3) Low Latency: Latency is a critical metric, especially for delay intolerant underwater applications.…”

MMNET: A Multi-Modal Network Architecture for Underwater Networking

“…Therefore, an UWSN framework supporting heterogeneous communication of various hardware is needed. Most of the existing underwater multi-mode communication frameworks are based on the adaptation layer, and need a special routing algorithm to support, but cannot achieve the versatility, re-programmability and transparency of multi-mode communication [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. The routing and forwarding of traditional UWSN depends on the node address.…”

“…Even the emerging UWSN architecture based on software-defined radio (SDR) and network function virtualization (NFV) only allocates the corresponding network resources to the application, and cannot realize the personalized network resource allocation based on the application requirements. Due to the characteristics of the multi-mode network, the traditional resource allocation model cannot make full use of the advantages of multimodal network, but also cannot meet the personalized needs of network resources [10,11]. Therefore, a network management program that can adapt to multimodal and heterogeneous networks and provide differentiated network resource services is needed.…”

“…Heterogeneous communication. On the basis of general hardware, MMNET connects communication equipment with standard interface, describes different communication modes in the form of software, and provides physical and medium access control (MAC) layer functions for upper layer network protocol in the form of a unified interface, so as to reduce the difficulty of heterogeneous communication caused by different communication modes due to hardware differences, and provide better heterogeneous communication support for UWSN [9][10][11]14,15,23].…”