Design of Underwater Sensor Networks for Water Quality Monitoring

Due to the limited bandwidth and large propagation delays experienced in underwater sensor networks, the challenges and planning requirements are different compared to their terrestrial counterparts. Underwater sensor networks can be deployed for industrial and scientific benefits such as pollution monitoring. The designing and working of an underwater sensor network for water quality monitoring is presented in our work for which data monitoring nodes and monitoring system are the main components. This system is applicable for shallow water scenarios. Parameters such as pH and temperature have been monitored using our deployed network. We go through the hardware aspects of the nodes along along with developing relaying and communication strategies. Each node would have transmitter to collect the temperature and pH from sensors and other parts would be the processing module, sensing module, power module and ZigBee radio frequency part. The water environment parameters would be monitored at the data centre through GPRS gateway. Our network developed would also provide applicable aspects to be adopted by environmental monitoring organizations.