Robust data-centric storage for underwater acoustic sensor networks

The unique features of underwater environments and recent advances in storage devices render data-centric storage (DCS) a promising solution for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN). However, existing DCS protocols were designed for terrestrial environments and face new challenges underwater: the well-known doubly selective channel limits the data rate while inducing high communication cost, and the harsh sea environment can lead to high failure probability of the unattended sensors. To address these issues, we design in this paper a robust (R-)DCS protocol with Raptor coding, which is tailored for UASN. Our proposed protocol is tested by ns2 simulations with underwater NSMiracle modules. Comparisons confirm that our R-DCS improves the robustness and reduces the communication overhead in comparison with existing DCS alternatives, and results in reduced energy consumption and improved storage uniformity.