I- Introduction

II- Acoustic Communications

III- Magneto-Inductive Communications

IV- Conclusion

References

ABSTRACT

Underwater communication remains a challenging technology via communication cables and the cost of underwater sensor network deployment is still very high. As an alternative, underwater wireless communication has been proposed and have received more attention in the last decade. Preliminary research indicated that Radio Frequency (RF) and Magneto-Inductive (MI) communication achieve higher data rate in the near field communication. Optical communication achieves good performance when limited to the line-of-sight positioning. Acoustic communication allows long transmission range. However, it suffers from transmission losses and time-varying signal distortion due to its dependency on environmental properties. These latter are salinity, temperature, pressure, depth of transceivers, and the environment geometry. This study is focused on both acoustic and magneto-inductive communications, which are the most used technologies for underwater networking. Such as acoustic communication is employed for applications requiring long communication range while MI is used for real-time communication. Moreover, this paper highlights the trade-off between underwater properties, wireless communication technologies, and communication quality. This can help the researcher community by providing clear insight for further research.

INTRODUCTION

Underwater communication remains realized until nowadays via communication cables due to the limited development of underwater wireless communications. However, the use of wires to ensure the connection between sensor nodes at sea bottom results in costly sensor network deployment. For this more intention is given by the researcher community to the Underwater wireless communication. Thus, it is known as a challenging communication medium when it’s compared to terrestrial wired or wireless connections. Since a low transmission rate over a short distance is achieved via sophisticated transceivers. Moreover, the marine environment is characterized by several distinguishing features that make it unique and different from the atmosphere environment where the traditional terrestrial communication is performed. As described in the following sections, underwater communication faces several phenomena such as depth related impact on temperature, salinity, pressure, winds, and waves. Four technologies might be used as an underwater wireless channel. Radio Frequency (RF) employed for terrestrial wireless communication is also enabled for underwater communication; it achieves high data rate for short communication range and suffers from Doppler effect. Optical transmission is also used for the marine environment where the blue-green wavelength is recommended for transmission that requires line-of-sight positioning.