Call for Articles

In the last decade, Internet-of-Things (IoT) has become immensely popular due to its great prospects for the future applications. These systems have already been applied in developed countries to ease the day-to-day human life. In recent years, researchers have identified great potential in underwater networks for distinct applications. Internet-of-Underwater-Things (IoUT) is a network of smart interconnected underwater objects. Recently IoUT have depicted great promise in judiciously deploying aforementioned underwater systems. IoUT has shown its applicability in smart buildings, biosecurity systems, marine life monitoring, off-shore exploration, underwater lost-treasure discovery, sports, assisted navigation, location awareness, environmental monitoring (such as monitoring of water quality, water pollution, water pressure or water temperature), water-based disasters (such as tsunami or nuclear accident), defense systems (such as surveillance systems or submarine detection) and several other applications. Even though IoUT systems are key enabler in underwater communication, they face challenges due to unreliable transmission medium, unstable radio signals, limited range, low bandwidth, inborn noise, low transmission rate, slow propagation speed, node mobility, lower resources and limited battery capacity. These challenges cause issues in channel modeling, optimal routing, security, privacy, communication overhead, congestion control, packet error rate, packet latency, energy consumption etc. Therefore, a number of researchers around the world are working in the systems based on IoUT to make them efficient, deployable and cost effective.

This Special Issue aims to reflect recent trends and challenges in network communications of underwater smart objects with emphasis on novel ideas and techniques. Authors are expected to submit original work on a variety of learning methods, feature engineering, comparison of existing methods, problem conceptualization and others. This will provide a platform for researchers to submit original manuscripts showcasing findings and exploring emerging trends and challenges in IoUT.

Potential topics of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Underwater communication architecture
• Communication system with autonomous underwater vehicles
• IoUT protocols and standards
• Intelligent underwater IoUT communication
• Reliable data delivery
• Topology control and routing
• Underwater localization techniques
• Congestion control protocols
• Underwater channel modeling
• Green computing and communication
• Underwater data collection and processing
• Energy-aware and low complexity protocol design
• Security and privacy in IoUT
• Quality-of-Service in IoUT
• Biosecurity applications
• Underwater surveillance and pollution monitoring
• Disaster management system
• Edge/Fog computing for IoUT
• IoUT for maritime Industry 4.0
• AI-based IoUT services with underwater networks
• Software defined networking based solutions
• Testbeds for distributed IoUT networks
• Smart IoUT with underwater vehicles
• Future networks using underwater sensors and IoUT
• Data mining and machine learning for IoUT
• Solutions for e-health monitoring of marine life
• Mixed Air-Underwater Communication
• Mixed Optical-Acoustic Underwater Communication

Submissions Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Article Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select the “September 2022: Emerging Trends and Challenges in Internet-of-Underwater-Things” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 14 May 2022 11 June 2022 (Extended Deadline)
Authors’ Revision Notification Date: 14 June 2022
Revised Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 October 2022
Final Decision Notification Date: 1 November 2022
Publication Date: December 2022

Guest Editors

Rutvij H. Jhaveri
Pandit Deendayal Energy University, India

Khaled M. Rabie
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), UK

Qin Xin
University of the Faroe Islands, Faroe Islands, Denmark 

Marwa Chafii
New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, UAE

Tien Anh Tran
Vietnam Maritime University, Vietnam    

Basem M. ElHalawany
Benha University, Egypt