Simulation-Based Performance Analysis of Location-Based Opportunistic Routing Protocols in Underwater Sensor Networks Having Communication Voids

Abstract

Recently, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have emerged as a prominent research area in the networking domain due to their wide range of applications in submarine tracking, disaster detection, oceanographic data collection, pollution detection, and underwater surveillance. With its unique characteristics like continuous movement of sensor nodes, limitations in bandwidth and high utilization of energy, efficient routing and data transfer in UWSNs have remained a challenging task for researchers. Almost all the protocols proposed for terrestrial sensor networks are inefficient and do not perform well in an underwater environment. Recently Location-Based Opportunistic Routing Protocols have been observed to perform well in UWSN environments. But it is also observed that these protocols suffer from performance degradation in UWSN networks with communication voids. The objective of this research paper is to discuss the working of major Location-Based Opportunistic Routing Protocols in UWSNs with communication voids and to highlight their issues and drawbacks. We analyzed the Quality of Service parameters, packet delivery ratio, end-to-nd delay, throughput, and energy efficiency of two major Location-Based Opportunistic Routing Protocols, i.e., Vector-Based Forwarding (VBF) and Hop-by-Hop VBF (HH-VBF) in UWSNs with communication voids using NS-2 simulator with Aqua-Sim extension. Simulation results state that both VBF and HH-VBF protocols suffered from performance degradations in UWSNs with communication voids. In addition to this, the paper also highlights open issues for UWSN to assist researchers in designing efficient routing protocols for UWSNs having multiple communication voids.