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Towards the Internet of Underwater Things:

Recent Developments and Future Challenges
Ruhul Amin Khalil∗ , Nasir Saeed† , Mohammad Inayatullah Babar∗ , and Tariqullah Jan∗
∗ Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar 25120, Pakistan
† King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Makkah, 23955, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract—This paper introduces the latest ad- environmental monitoring, disaster prevention, fish
vancements in the field of Internet of Underwater tracking, and military operations.
Things (IoUT) with importance towards the tech-
nological aspects for communication and location
awareness. The IoUT is composed of underwater de-
vices such as sensor nodes with defined communica-
tion and networking protocols. The IoUT framework
integrates various marine communication technolo-
gies based on acoustic waves, radio waves, optical
waves, and magnetic induction. This new framework
enables multiple applications, including ocean explo-
ration, assisted navigation, location awareness, and
environmental pollution control. Hence, this paper
provides state-of-art communication technologies and
consumer electronics (CE) aspect for implementing
the IoUT network. Furthermore, this paper also
states the recent advancements in IoUT and its useful Fig. 1. Applications of Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT).
applications in the underwater environment. More-
over, we also classify various research requirements
In the context of Consumer Electronics (CE),
and challenges concerning the efficient design and
proper implementation of IoUT networks. IoUT technology is getting much attention. For in-
stance, smart underwater devices in IoUT networks,
such as remote-controlled drones and autonomous
I. I NTRODUCTION cameras, can be controlled and accessed digitally
from any on-shore or off-shore locations. Many
It is known that water covers more than two- companies across the globe are manufacturing elec-
thirds of Earth’s surface in the form of oceans. tronic devices that are gradually accustomed to the
These oceans provide plentiful aids to mankind, IoUT paradigm.
e.g., climate regulation, food supply chain, trans- Domingo et. al first introduced the fundamental
portation, leisure, and medicine industry. Conse- idea of IoUT, consisting of smart objects intercon-
quently, the ocean-related business subsidizes ap- nected to monitor the unexplored oceans [2]. These
proximately 500 billion US dollars to the world interconnected smart underwater objects utilize the
economical industry. However, due to the chal- embedded sensors and Autonomous Underwater
lenging environment of oceans, 95% of the oceans Vehicles (AUVs) to detect, deduce, and respond
are still unexplored. The Internet of underwater to the environmental effects. The underwater ob-
things (IoUT) is considered as one of the revolu- jects communicate with the outside world through
tionary technologies not only in the case of ocean surface objects such as surface buoys and surface
exploration but for its bio-diversity maintenance stations [3]. With the recent advancements in tech-
as well [1]. Fig. 1 depicts some major applica- nology, reliable electronic devices are required to
tions of IoUT, including underwater exploration, develop practical IoUT networks. These devices

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Fig. 2. Basic architecture of IoUT.

are intended to use any available technology to
communicate effectively in the IoUT network [4].
The IEEE P2413 and IEEE P2510 standards explain
the architectural aspects of IoUT and corresponding
sensing devices. Fig. 2 depicts the basic architec-
ture for IoUT with various underwater and surface
things connected through different communications
links.
The development of IoUT is in its early stages
and faces various challenges. One of the major
challenges is their communication with surface
devices due to the harsh underwater medium [5].
Various communication mediums such as acoustic
waves, radio frequency (RF), optical waves and
Magnetic Induction (MI) waves are used for com-
munication among underwater environment. These
communication mediums offers some advantages
for data transmission but at the same time goes
under performance degradation due to the various
effects of harsh underwater environment [6]. Table
I summarizes various features of each technology
for underwater communications.
The rest of the paper is structured and organized
as follows. The recent technological developments
in hardware, and communication for IoUT are dis-
cussed in Section II. Afterward, some discussion
is made on the IoUT applications from a technical
perspective in along with an overview of the general
requirements and research challenges of the IoUT
in Section III, followed by conclusions in Section
IV.
II. R ECENT D EVELOPMENTS IN I O UT
This section cover various technological devel-
opments for the IoUT which mainly include smart
devices for IoUT, consumer electronics for IoUT,
its architecture and technologies used for commu-
nication.
A. Smart Devices for IoUT
The IoUT is composed of smart devices that
use wireless mediums such as acoustic, RF op-
tical, and MI for their interconnectivity in the
underwater environment. The IoUT devices can
be characterized on the bases of their applica-
tions, energy consumption, and transmission range
[7], [8]. For instance, the Aquacomm modem
(16kHz/30kHz, 100-480bps, 9600/4800 baud pro-
grammable) are low-power (up to 3.3V or RS-232)
devices used for different underwater applications
such as pipeline monitoring, and marine network-
ing. Similarly, M64 WL-11003 modem, underwa-
ter GPS kit WL-11001, AquaSense series sen-
sors (WL-21031-1) are also utilized for underwater
communication. The M64 modem (64bps/200kHz)

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Electronics Magazine

TABLE I
F EATURES OF VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES FOR UNDERWATER COMMUNICATION

Parameter Acoustic Waves RF Waves Optical Waves MI Waves

Attenuation Depend on Depend on 0.39 dB/m (ocean) -20dB/m(Clean
Distance and frequency and - 11 dB/m (hazy water) and -
frequency (0.1 - 4 conductivity (3.5 - water) 6dB/m(ocean)
dB/km) 5 dB/m)
Antenna size 0.1 m 0.5 m 0.1 m 0.1 m - 0.3 m
Bandwidth Distance and fre- ≈ MHz 10 - 150 MHz ≈ 100KHz
quency dependent:
100 Hz-1 KHz
Data rate kbps Mbps Gbps Gbps
Distance Up to ≈ 103 meters Up to ≈ 10 meters ≈ 10 - 100 meters ≈ up to100 meters
Efficiency ≈ 100 bits/Joules - ≈ 30, 000 -
bits/Joules
Frequency band 10 - 15 kHz 30 - 300 Hz 1012 - 1015 Hz 7 MHz/13.56 MHz
Latency High Moderate Low Very Low
Performance parameters Temperature, salin- Conductivity and Absorption, Conductivity and
ity and pressure Permittivity scattering/turbidity, Permeability
organic matters
Speed (m/s) 1500 m/s ≈ 2.255 × 108 m/s ≈ 2.255 × 108 m/s 3.33 × 108 m/s
Transmission power Tens of Watts (typ- Few mW to 100 of Few Watts Few Watts
ical value) Watts (distance de-
pendent)

is a low power device operating in UART 115200
baud with serial (3.3V or R232) for distances up
to 200m. Similarly, the Aqua sensor series (WL-
21031-1) includes Oxygen-sensor, Salinity-sensor,
Tilt-sensor, and Load Shackle are used for sensing
and communication in the marine environment.
The photoelectric sensors, such as retro-reflectors
(FE-MLS8C) and Thru-beam sensors (MLS4B and
MLS5B), are used for underwater optical commu-
nication. Fig. 3 shows some of the smart devices
used in IoUT networks.
Fig. 3. Various devices and sensors used for communication
in IoUT.
B. Consumer Electronics for IoUT
Recent advancements in the Consumer Electron-
ics industry has enabled the underwater exploration
a well of thought. Each year, the Consumer Elec-
tronics Show (CES) is arranged for those who thrive
for business in consumer technologies. The recent
edition of CES introduced many smart underwater
devices such as autonomous cameras, Sublue scoot-
ers, and remote-controlled drones [9] as depicted
in Fig. 4. These devices enable various marine
applications; for instance, the Navatics Mito is a 4K
camera with 1080p streaming capability to record
and stream effectively in an underwater environ-
ment [10]. It has a built-in stabilization quadrotor
and a downloadable on recovery capability with
a battery life of up to four hours. Consequently,
Robosea’s Biki is a flying underwater drone that
used for underwater surveillance, exploration, and
photography. It is operated with the help of a smart-
phone application on the water surface. Robosea’s
Biki has the capability of a return-to-base feature
that uses its built-in GPS when it operates on the
surface. Another example is Robo-shark, which can

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dive up to 300 m, and has a range of 1.5km to
3km. It uses infrared sensors for obstacle avoidance
up to 1 m away, and its shell consists of sound-
absorbing material. The Subblue scooter used for
divers in underwater traveling and exploration con-
sists of a built-in motor that is battery-powered,
and its cost is approximately $500. These smart
underwater objects are evolving day by day that
makes the consumer electronics industry effectively
participating in marine applications.
Fig. 4. Some smart underwater devices presented in a recent
Consumer Electronics show.
C. Architecture of IoUT
Smart underwater objects in IoUT can operate
either in an infrastructure or in an ad hoc modality:
The infrastructure-based IoUT might compose of
underwater base stations that are responsible for
creating an underwater local area network (LAN).
This network not only serves the underlying nodes
but also monitor their inter-coordination and cell
coverage area. In contrast, the ad hoc IoUT are
mainly distributed wireless networks that do not
depend upon the availability of the pre-fitted equip-
ment for the given underwater network. There-
fore, the nodes actively participate in the traffic
requests alongside with dynamically determined
routing path and rely on network connectivity. This
modality requires the skills of self-alignment and
self-association in the absence of a centralized
controlling unit.
Fig. 2 provides a basic 3D architecture of IoUT,
where the underwater objects use various com-
munication mediums such as acoustic or optical
waves. These objects not only communicated with
each other but with the base stations as well. The
surface buoy gathers the required information at the
surface, and communicate it to mobile and onshore
base stations through an RF communication net-
work. Based on the classification standard, there
exists three achievable architecture of IoUT:
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• Spatial coverage: Based on the coverage, the
IoUT can be classified into 1-D, 2-D, and 3-D
networks.
• Mobility: Depending upon the movement of
smart objects, IoUT can be classified as sta-
tionary or mobile networks.
• Channel: The various wireless channels that
are used for underwater communications can
be classified as RF, acoustic, optical, magnetic
induction and hybrid.
D. Communication in IoUT
Communication among the smart underwater ob-
jects in IoUT is difficult due to the harsh and turbid
nature of the seawater. Presently, there are four
technologies to enable communication in IoUT, i.e.,
acoustic waves, RF waves, optical waves, and mag-
netic induction (MI). In the following, we briefly
discuss each of these underwater communication
technologies.
Acoustic waves are the most used communica-
tion technology for underwater applications due
to their long transmission range. In the literature,
many underwater acoustics networks are presented
that can achieve data rates up to 20 Kbps for a
distance up to 1 km in the deep underwater environ-
ment. However, for larger distances up to 100 km,
the data rate is reduced to 250-550 bps. Nonethe-
less, this long-distance communication is achieved
at the cost of greater latency [11]. Moreover, the
high latency introduces the synchronization prob-
lem for acoustic-based underwater communication
systems.
Alternatively, the RF-based underwater commu-
nication networks have two advantages. First, the
RF waves usually provide a smooth transition at
interfaces like air and water. This property can
provide cross-boundary communication that com-
bines terrestrial and underwater RF communication
networks. Second, RF waves not only tolerates the
turbulence but also turbidity in water [11]. How-
ever, the major limitation of RF-based systems is
their limited transmission range in water at very low
frequencies range from 30Hz to 300Hz. Moreover,
the underwater RF transmission networks require
large size antenna that leads to high design costs
and thus, consumes more energy.
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In contrast, the optical communication medium optical waves can be utilized to provide high
offers a high data rate and low latency for IoUT. data rate, low-latency, and reliable short-range
These two features of underwater optical com- communications while acoustic waves can pro-
munication enable real-time underwater telephony vide long-range communication at the cost of
and multimedia applications. Moreover, the size of higher latency and low data rate.
optical waves-based IoUT is small and has low cost • Latency: As mentioned earlier the commercial
as the transceivers are made up of either photo- modems for underwater communications uses
diodes or laser diodes. All these properties make acoustic waves, and therefore their transmis-
optical-waves based IoUT an attractive technology. sion speed is almost 100 thousand times slower
However, the implementation of optical-IoUT is as compared to the communication speed in
more complex since the range of optical waves in the terrestrial IoT networks [13]. Hence, the
underwater is limited, and it also requires accurate low speed of sound waves restricts real-time
pointing and tracking between the transmitter and communications in IoUTs. The development
the receiver. of optical modems for IoUTs can enable low-
Lately, Magnetic Induction (MI) is utilized to latency real-time communication. However,
provide average-speed omnidirectional short-range the research on the development of optical
underwater communications [12]. The response of modems is still in the academic research phase.
MI channel is more predictable and stabilized as • Transmission Range: Another major challenge
compared to the other three communication tech- for IoUT is the limited transmission range
niques. The MI waves usually penetrate the lossy of wireless communication technologies [14].
medium in an underwater environment at a speed Although acoustic waves provide transmission
approximately equal to the speed of light. This indi- in the range of few kilometers but at the cost of
cates that MI waves can travel faster and overcome a low data rate. Other high-speed underwater
the latency problems usually caused by acoustic communication technologies such as RF, opti-
waves. Last but not least, MI communication is cal, and MI have limited transmission range.
accomplished by using small size transmitter and For example, the transmission range of optical
receiver coils with non-visible and non-audible waves is in 100 meters and therefore there
waves that can be efficiently utilized in numerous is dire need to design novel optical modems
wide range of civilian and military applications. capable of providing long transmission range.
Moreover, the transmission range can also be
III. C HALLENGES IN I O UT improved by using relays. However, deploy-
ment and modeling of relays in the dynamic,
The existing research on IoUT encounters many
misty and harsh underwater environment is a
challenges due to the unique, misty and harsh
challenging task.
underwater environment. In this section, we briefly
• Mobility: Mobility is one of the significant
discuss the significant challenges of IoUT.
issues for IoUT due to the dynamic nature
• Transmission Medium: Most of the exist-
of the underwater environment. IoUT mainly
ing underwater communications systems use consists of a network of smart objects where
acoustic waves due to their long transmission the movement of water randomly changes its
range. However, the acoustic waves-based sys- topology. Therefore, tackling such kind of
tem can only support low data rate applica- dynamic topologies is a cumbersome problem
tions. Therefore, efforts have been made to and needs to be investigated.
enhance the overall data rate of the underwa- • Reliability: The wireless links in IoUT are
ter communication system by utilizing optical unstable and have low reliability due to various
waves. However, optical waves have their lim- impediments in the underwater environment.
itations such as low transmission range and The phenomena such as scattering, absorption,
directional communication. Hence, depending mobility, and turbulence result in a severe
on the application of IoUT, the transmission transmission loss in the underwater medium.
medium can be selected, for example, the

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• Network Lifetime: IoUT mainly consists of
sensors which are battery powered with a lim-
ited amount of energy. Since the underwater
environment is harsh, it does not allow to
re-charge the batteries of these sensors [14].
Therefore, either energy harvesting or energy-
efficient networking solutions are required for
IoUT to improve its lifetime. However, it is
a challenging task because the conventional
energy sources such as solar energy, piezoelec-
tric, and ocean current power generation can-
not be directly applied to enhance the lifetime
of IoUT.
IV. C ONCLUSION
This article has introduced technological ad-
vancements and challenges to develop the internet
of underwater things (IoUT). The use of various
communication technologies such as acoustic, RF,
optical, and magnetic induction are briefly dis-
cussed for IoUT. Moreover, the possible architec-
tures and devices used to develop practical IoUT
networks are presented. Besides the communica-
tion technologies and architectures, we showed the
consumer electronics (CE) aspects of IoUT along
with their applications. Some of the significant
challenges and future works are also summarized.
We envision that IoUT will result in a worldwide
network of smart oceans providing numerous ap-
plications.
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RUHUL AMIN KHALIL (S’12) is currently pursuing Ph.D.
degree in Electrical Engineering, and serving as Lecturer in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Engineer-
ing & Technology Peshawar, Pakistan. His research interest
include localization in underwater wireless communication.
Contact him at Email-ID: ruhulamin@uetpeshawar.edu.pk
NASIR SAEED (S’14-M’16-SM’19) is currently a postdoc-
toral research fellow at Communication Theory Lab, King
Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST),
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His research interest localization,
and dimensionality reduction in underwater wireless commu-
nication. Contact him at Email-ID: mr.nasir.saeed@ieee.org
MOHAMMAD INAYATULLAH BABAR (M’05) is cur-
rently working as Professor in Department of Electri-
cal Engineering, University of Engineering & Technol-
ogy Peshawar, Pakistan. His research interest include wire-
less communication networks. Contact him at Email-ID:
babar@uetpeshawar.edu.pk
TARIQULLAH JAN is currently working as Associate Pro-
fessor in Department of Electrical Engineering, University of
Engineering & Technology Peshawar, Pakistan. His research
interest adaptive signal processing and its applications. Contact
him at Email-ID: tariqullahjan@uetpeshawar.edu.pk