SensIs - Underwater acoustic network for ice-monitoring

Routing for low latency underwater acoustic network-communication is investigated. The application is monitoring of ice-threats to offshore operations in the Arctic - to provide warnings that enable operators to react to such threats. The scenario produces relatively high traffic load, and the network should favour low delay and adequate reliability rather than energy usage minimization. The ICRP (Information-Carrying based Routing Protocol), originally proposed by Wei Liang et al. [1] in 2007, is chosen as basis. ICRP obtains unicast routing paths by sending data payload as broadcast packets when no route information is available. Thus, data can be delivered without the cost of reactive signalling latency. In this paper we explore the capabilities of a slightly enhanced/adapted ICRP, tailored to the ice monitoring application. By simulations and experiments at sea it is demonstrated that the protocol performs well and can manage the applications high traffic load – this provided that the point-to-point links provide sufficient bit rates and capacity headroom.