Simulation Tools for Underwater Sensor Networks
Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UWASN) suffer from a limited bandwidth, long propagation delay, half-duplex nature of the links, high packet loss, and many other challenges. Due to both logistical and technical difficulties, it is not easy to deploy a realistic and a scalable UWASN. Hence, simulating the UWASN along with its proposed protocols provides a good practice and a first step towards a realistic network deployment. Recently, various simulators have been proposed to achieve this purpose, one of which is the UnetStack simulator. UnetStack is an agent-based network stack and simulator developed to support highly optimized protocols for UWASN. It allows easy network configurations, automation and management, and allows protocols to be simulated in realistic channel conditions. UnetStack violates the traditional layered network stack as it provides Cross-layer optimization that allows direct communication between layers. This lecture provides a general overview about an existing simulation tools for underwater network simulation. A more detailed discussion will be presented about UnetStack simulator. UnetStack simulator will be discussed through a realistic example, which explains how UnetStack is used to develop and evaluate various UWASN algorithms and protocols that are being proposed by USMART project team.