Underwater Drones for Acoustic Sensor Network

Apparently, two-thirds of our planet is covered by water bodies, of which oceanic coverage deeply impacts terrestrial life. Oceans form a majestic resource of most of the amazing marine creatures and natural resources, especially mineral oil. This makes underwater monitoring one of the most demanding areas to explore. For monitoring the oceanic layer, a specialized form of underwater vehicle network is employed using underwater drones for acoustic monitoring. The underwater drones are autonomously operated and remotely tracked using onshore and offshore base stations. The underwater research draws eminence from a wide variety of application-based research, including collaborative undersea exploration, naval surveillance and other oceanographic mining and engineering tasks. Underwater communication confronts unique challenges that involve severe bandwidth constraints, high bit error rates, variable propagation delays and limited spatial correlation. Such constraints mandate the use of sound waves for information transfer that further requires complex signal processing at receiving ends. Owing to such complex capabilities, acoustic sensors are quite expensive and therefore, sparsely deployed. Moreover, oceanic tides and drifts results in high vulnerability for acoustic devices towards failure due to fouling and corrosion underwater. Our research is focused on presenting surveys of architecture and applications of underwater drones for acoustic sensor networks abided by significant characteristics and challenges.