RF based underwater wireless sensor network architectures for tracking intruders in 3D space

Acoustic wave based underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs), generally deployed for underwater surveillance, face high challenges while meeting the demand for fast detection and tracking of many modern high-speed submerged intruders. The higher propagation speed of radio frequency (RF) wave keeps the RF based underwater networks into focus for supporting such fast detection requirements. In light of this, this paper proposes two three dimensional (3D) cluster-based UWSN architectures and scrutinizes them for identifying and tracking submerged moving intruders. The UWSN senses the presence of an intruder within the surveillance area and instantaneously transfers the data to an onshore base station (BS) for tracking the intruder. All the communication links from the intruder sensing nodes to the BS are RF based. The BS is also equipped with the essential mathematical tools for identifying and tracking an intruder. Extensive simulations are carried out for evaluating the performance of the deployed architectures in a seawater environment. Accuracy in tracking by the topologies is thoroughly examined in terms of error in estimated travelled distance as well as travelled direction. Influence of various system parameters on the performance is also reasonably analyzed.