Enhancing Underwater Sensor Network Security with Coordinated Communications

In recent years, the underwater sensor network has emerged as a promising solution for a wide range of marine applications. The underwater wireless sensors are usually designed to operate in open water, where eavesdropping can be a serious issue. Existing work either utilizes cryptography that is computationally intensive or requires expensive hardware. In this paper, we present a coordinated multi-point transmission based protocol to improve network security. The proposed protocol dynamically pairs sensors for coordinated communications to undermine the eavesdroppers' capability. Our preliminary results indicate that the underwater sensor network security can be enhanced using the proposed method, especially in applications where cryptography or special hardware are not suitable.