An acoustic communication based AQUA-GLOMO simulator for underwater networks

In an underwater environment there can be various applications relating to the naval monitoring of an area and information gathering through the sensor nodes or underwater vehicles. The information gathered/monitored/detected in this manner can be sent to a group of sensors, or any sensor or vehicle may initiate a query asking for the information of its interest from the subset of the sensors. This information transfer or query dissemination can involve either broadcasting, multicasting or geocasting technique, depending on whether the query is sent to all the nodes, or a subset of nodes based on their locations. After developing any technique, it is required to validate it for its purpose. In underwater scenarios, testing any technique is not only costly but difficult too in terms of full deployment. Hence the next option is to test any modeled technique on a Simulator. A number of simulation tools have already been developed for the wired/wireless radio networks. However, these tools cannot be used for underwater environment with acoustic communication medium, as there is wide range of difference between the radio and the acoustic communications. Therefore, the acoustic communication based AQUA-GLOMO simulator has been implemented with GLOMOSIM as the base simulator. At the network layer, the RMTG model has also been included in this simulator that is an underwater sensor network geocasting model. The results obtained on this simulator have shown an evolving efficient simulator for underwater acoustic communications.