Handover Mechanism Based on Underwater Hybrid Software-Defined Modem in Advanced Diver Networks

For the past few decades, the internet of underwater things (IoUT) obtained a lot of attention in mobile aquatic applications such as oceanography, diver network monitoring, unmanned underwater exploration, underwater surveillance, location tracking system, etc. Most of the IoUT applications rely on acoustic medium. The current IoUT applications face difficulty in delivering a reliable communication system due to the various technical limitations of IoUT environment such as low data rate, attenuation, limited bandwidth, limited battery, limited memory, connectivity problem, etc. One of the significant applications of IoUT include monitoring underwater diver networks. In order to perform a reliable and energy-efficient communication system in the underwater diver networks, a smart underwater hybrid software-defined modem (UHSDM) for the mobile ad-hoc network was developed that is used for selecting the best channel/medium among acoustic, visible light communication (VLC), and infrared (IR) based on the criteria established within the system. However, due to the mobility of underwater divers, the developed UHSDM meets the challenges such as connectivity errors, frequent link failure, transmission delay caused by re-routing, etc. During emergency, the divers are most at the risk of survival. To deal with diver mobility, connectivity, energy efficiency, and reducing the latency in ADN, a handover mechanism based on pre-built UHSDM is proposed in this paper. This paper focuses on (1) design of UHSDM for ADN (2) propose the channel selection mechanism in UHSDM for selecting the best medium for handover and (3) propose handover protocol in ADN. The implementation result shows that the proposed mechanism can be used to find the new route for divers in advance and the latency can be reduced significantly. Additionally, this paper shows the real field experiment of air tests and underwater tests with various distances. This research will contribute much to the profit of researchers in underwater diver networks and underwater networks, for improving the quality of services (QoS) of underwater applications.