Multiple-UUV approach for enhancing connectivity in underwater ad-hoc sensor networks

Underwater sensor networks typically comprise of sensor nodes that are deployed in sufficiently large numbers for data collection, monitoring and surveillance. The acquired data is relayed by the sensors over multihop wireless acoustic communications links to sinks and collection points. While the sensors are generally static, the adverse channel and harsh environmental conditions increase the chances of link breakages due to fading and ambient noise. Our proposed scheme utilizes multiple underwater unmanned vehicles (UUVs, e.g. seabed crawlers) to enhance connectivity. The UUVs patrol the areas where connectivity is likely to be poor to overcome temporal interference and if necessary deploy more sensors to repair the breaks in connectivity. In the event that network becomes partitioned, the UUVs can also serve as local sinks to the sensors in the isolated partitions, and ferry the data from the isolated sensors to the nearest connected part of the network.