Three-dimensional and two-dimensional deployment analysis for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Underwater sensor networks find applications in oceanographic data collection, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, assisted navigation, and tactical surveillance. In this paper, deployment strategies for two-dimensional and three-dimensional communication architectures for underwater acoustic sensor networks are proposed, and a mathematical deployment analysis for both architectures is provided. The objective is to determine the minimum number of sensors to be deployed to achieve optimal sensing and communication coverage, which are dictated by application requirements; provide guidelines on how to choose the optimal deployment surface area, given a target body of water; study the robustness of the sensor network to node failures, and provide an estimate of the number of redundant sensor nodes to be deployed to compensate for potential failures. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.