Marine based Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges and Requirements

Marine environmental monitoring based on wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a challenging area of research due to the instability of the water field. Due to the characteristics of the water environment, there are certain considerations which must be taken into account before the establishment of marine based wireless sensor networks. These include the deployment of wireless nodes (WNs), energy consumption, network connectivity and security. This paper compares and contrasts the basic parameters relating to WSNs, while highlighting the main components necessary to form an ideal marine based WSN system, and some difficulties of implementing security in Marine WSNs such as the management of the cryptographic keys.