A Survey and Comparison Study of Localization in Underwater Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) are the enabling technology for various underwater applications, and the interest in UWSNs is growing. Applications of underwater sensing range from oil industry to aquaculture, and include instrument monitoring, pollution control, climate recording, prediction of natural disturbances, search and survey missions. Location information is important for this kind of applications. Localization is one of the major and challenging tasks in UWSNs. Because underwater environment is usually complex and hostile, and beacons are prone to move offsetting from their origin positions and underwater channel occurs error easily. Hence, the coordinates provided by some beacons for the localization of unknown nodes are possible to be inaccurate. The positioning error of beacons will affect the accuracy of unknown nodes significantly. This paper makes a comparison study about various localization schemes for UWSNs. Keywords— Underwater sensor networks, under water localization, acoustic communication, AUV,