IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - March/April 2020 - 113

reliability, recent proposals are already reaching
an upper bound for this task. Therefore, new
paradigms should be investigated. One possible
direction would be the use of heterogeneous
underwater communication technologies (e.g.,
acoustic and optical) and AUVs as data mules
and mobile sinks.
Energy consumption: It is necessary to design
new networking protocols for greener IoUT. Seminal studies in the literature have discussed the
potential and drawbacks of duty-cycling for
IoUT. However, further investigation is required,
especially in the control of the sleep interval of
the nodes to reduce the energy consumption at
central nodes, achieve a balanced energy consumption, and prolong the network lifetime.

3. F. Pieri, C. Zambelli, A. Nannini, P. Olivo, and
S. Saponara, "Is consumer electronics redesigning
our cars?: Challenges of integrated technologies for
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method for oceanic environmental elements collection
with underwater sensor networks," Mobile Netw. Appl.,
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underwater acoustic signals via structured
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pp. 19:1-19:36, 2018.

CONCLUSION
In this article, we presented and discussed
the benefits brought by IoUT for humanitarian
applications. We described the main technologies for water sensing and communications, as
well their use in different UWSN architectures
for underwater disaster management mitigation.
Moreover, we also thoroughly investigated the
motivation and challenges for the design of
IoUTs for enabling large-scale autonomous
underwater humanitarian applications. Finally,
we presented future research directions that
can lead this technology to assist in humanitarian needs.

7. M. Stojanovic, "On the relationship between capacity
and distance in an underwater acoustic
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streaming for mobile underwater sensors," Ad Hoc
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9. K. W. S. Palitharathna et al., "Relay-assisted optical
wireless communications in turbid water," in Proc. 13th
ACM WUWNet, 2018, pp. 1-5.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the
NSERC CREATE TRANSIT Program, and in part
by Canada Research Chairs Program. Moreover,
we would like to thank the research agencies,
~o Paulo
CAPES, CNPq, and Grant #15/24536-2 Sa
Research Foundation.

4th UComms, 2018, pp. 1-5.
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"Performance analysis of connectivity and localization
in multi-hop underwater optical wireless sensor
networks," IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 18,
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13. R. W. L. Coutinho, A. Boukerche, L. F. M. Vieira,
and A. A. F. Loureiro, "Geographic and

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