IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020 - 108

Special Section on Implementable Humanitarian Technology

Table 1. Sensory devices for UWSNs.
Sensor
Device

Sensing Capability

IMSTL

Water temperature (from À20 to +60 C)
and pressure (from 0.5 mWG to
100 mWG).

LMK 351

Figure 1. Example of underwater humanitarian applications.

evaluating water quality, and sensing heavy
waves and detecting tsunamis. However, the
applicability of UWSNs will be limited to small
deployment of a few underwater sensor nodes,
which will quest for a new architecture named of
Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT). IoUT will
enable autonomous operation of large-scale
ocean monitoring for humanitarian applications.
These challenges include the development of
intelligent and eco-friendly floats, robust and
fault-tolerant underwater sensors, cost-effective
technology for oceanic missions, and efficient
underwater wireless communication.
In this article, we promote underwater sensor
networks as a humanitarian technology for disaster mitigation. We analyze the potentials and challenges of IoUT in immediate detection and
monitoring of events that would cause disasters
(e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, and oil spills). The
main contributions of this article are as follows: 1)
the description of different underwater sensors
and communication technologies, as well as
underwater sensor network architectures to monitor variables and events in an area of interest in
order to detect and monitor disasters and 2) the
discussion of the challenges that need to be solved
to empower large-scale applications of underwater sensor networks as a humanitarian technology.

TECHNOLOGY FOR UNDERWATER
HUMANITARIAN APPLICATIONS
Technology for sensing and wireless communication is the main building block of important
smart systems, such as smart health systems,1
safe driving,2 and self-driving cars.3 Underwater

108

Corrosive and viscous liquid level.

SBE 18 pH

pH at depths to 1200 m.

HydroCATEP

Conductivity, temperature, depth,
dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and
chlorophyll

SeaOwl
UV-A

Chlorophyll, backscattering, and
fluorescent dissolved organic matter
(FDOM)

humanitarian applications will use devices that
can sense and communicate when submerged.
In this section, we discuss the technology used
in underwater sensing, communication, and network architecture, which enable current underwater humanitarian applications.

Underwater Sensing
Overall, an underwater sensor node with the
sensing devices can cost between $500 and
$10 000. Table 1 lists examples of sensor devices
that can be easily attached to current underwater sensor nodes and that enable humanitarian
underwater monitoring applications. Although
underwater sensing devices are usually embedded in robust nodes covered by suitable cases,
the sensing accuracy in readings is not an issue.
The critical challenge in terms of underwater
sensing is how to reduce the amount of collected
data from an event without diminishing the quality of its observation.
The reduction of the acquired signal is fundamental for improving the data delivery and prolonging UWSN lifetime. This is because underwater
wireless communication is challenging, strongly
impaired by human-made and environmental
noise, and energy-hungry. Therefore, compressive
sensing (CS) is gaining increased attention in
underwater monitoring applications. CS is a signal
processing technique in which the signal generated by the observed events can be reconstructed
from a few samples.
Kang et al.4 proposed a random sensing mechanism for underwater sensor nodes to select a

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