On Distributed Routing in Underwater Optical Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) is becoming an attractive technology for underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) since it offers high-speed communication links. Although UOWC overcomes the drawbacks of acoustic and radio frequency communication channels such as high latency and low data rate, yet, it has its own limitations. One of the major limitations of UOWC is its limited transmission range which demands to develop a multi-hop network with efficient routing protocols. Currently, the routing protocols for UOWSNs are centralized having high complexity and large end-to-end delay. In this article, first, we present the existing routing protocols for UOWSNs. Based on the existing protocols, we then propose distributed routing protocols to address the problems of high complexity and large end-to-end delay. Numerical results have been provided to show that the proposed routing protocol is superior to the existing protocols in terms of complexity and end-to-end delay. Finally, we have presented open research directions in UOWSNs.