Disruption Tolerant Networks for Underwater Communications

Abstract: Disruption Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are employed in applications where the network is likely to be disrupted due to environmental conditions or where the network topology makes it impossible to find a direct route from the sender to the receiver. Underwater networks typically use acoustic waves for transmitting data. However, these waves are susceptible to interference from sources of noise such as the wake from ships, sounds from snapping shrimp, and collisions from acoustic waves generated by other nodes. DTNs are good candidates for situations where successfully delivering the message is more important than low delivery times and high network throughput. This is true for certain applications of underwater networks. DTNs can also create new options for network topologies, such as opening up the possibility of using data muling nodes if the network is resilient to delays. The Acoustic Research Laboratory (ARL) at NUS has developed their own Groovy-based underwater network simulator called UnetStack, in which network protocols can be designed and tested in a simulator. These protocols can later be directly deployed on physical hardware, such as Subnero's underwater modems. Hence, this project revolves around creating a new UnetStack protocol called DtnLink for enabling disruption tolerant networking in various use cases of the ARL.