20-09-2013, 03:00 PM
Underwater wireless communication networks (UWCNs)
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INTRODUCTION
Underwater wireless communication networks (UWCNs) include sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that interact to perform specific applications such as underwater monitoring. Coordination and information sharing between sensors and AUVs make the provision of security challenging.
The unique characteristics of the underwater acoustic channel and the differences between such networks and their ground based counterparts require the development of efficient and reliable security mechanisms.
The aquatic environment is particularly vulnerable to malicious attacks due to the high bit error rates, large and variable propagation delay, low bandwidth of acoustic channels in water. Achieving reliable inter vehicle and sensor-AUV communication is especially difficult due to the mobility of AUVs and the movement of sensors with water currents.
The above mentioned characteristics of UWCNs have several security issues associated like packet errors, eavesdropping, modification of packets, and many more. Also since power consumption in underwater communications is higher than in terrestrial radio communications energy exhaustion attacks can reduce network life.
The different attacks possible are Jamming, Wormholes, Selective Forwarding, Sybil Attacks, etc. Defences for these are discussed. Jamming can be overcome by Spread Spectrum techniques, Wormhole detection is done with a visual modelling using Dis-VoW and other attacks can be countered by authentication, verification, and positioning.
Open research challenges for secure localization, routing and time synchronization are mentioned.
In this paper UWCNs is discussed, with emphasis on the possible attacks, countermeasures and further opportunities and scope for development in this direction to improve security of such networks.
Overview of Underwater Wireless Communication Networks
Underwater wireless communication networks (UWCNs) consist of sensors and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that interact, coordinate and share information with each other to carry out sensing and monitoring functions. A pictorial representation is shown below:
In last several years, underwater communication network (UWCN) has found an increasing use in a widespread range of applications, such as coastal surveillance systems, environmental research, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) operation, oil-rig maintenance, collection of data for water monitoring, linking submarines to land, to name a few.