Performance and Trade-offs of Opportunistic Routing in Underwater Networks

Underwater acoustic channel imposes many challenges into underwater networks communication, such as high bit error, temporary losses of connectivity due to shadow zones, limited bandwidth capacity and communication signal spreading over large areas. Opportunistic routing is a new routing paradigm that allows more than one node to forward a packet by taking advantage of the broadcast medium and overhearing of the packet transmission. In this paper, the authors investigate the tradeoffs present in opportunistic routing for underwater networks.