A Survey on Localization Free Routing Protocols for UWSNs

ABSTRACT The major applications of underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) include seismic monitoring, tactical surveillance, pollution monitoring, assisted navigations, oil spill and gas leak monitoring. These applications need the deployment of sensors under water which would sense and collect the relevant data. The collected data has to be routed to proper destination or sink for further processing. The process of communicating or sending the data acquired, to destination or sink is called routing. The different types of UWSN routing protocols such as localization free, localization based, vector based, depth based, cluster based, cross layer based are found in literature of UWSNs. Many researchers have done survey on localization based protocols. This paper focuses on the study of existing localization free protocols. The research needs the design of new routing protocols which prove an improvement in performance metrics such as PDR, network life time, E2E delay, energy tax, alive nodes, dead nodes and energy consumption. UWSN routing protocols are broadly classified as localization free and localization based routing protocols. The paper reviews existing localization free UWSN routing protocols and the important aspects of protocols are discussed and analysed in terms of performance metrics and parameters. This survey would be a step to further explore new algorithms for routing data collected to sink in underwater environment.