A Survey on Efficient Routing Strategies for The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT)

— The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging technology that promised to connect the underwater world to the land internet. It is enabled via the usage of the Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network (UASN). Therefore, it is affected by the challenges faced by UASNs such as the high dynamics of the underwater environment, the high transmission delays, low bandwidth, high-power consumption, and high bit error ratio. Due to these challenges, designing an efficient routing protocol for the IoUT is still a trade-off issue. In this paper, we discuss the specific challenges imposed by using UASN for enabling IoUT, we list and explain the general requirements for routing in the IoUT and we discuss how these challenges and requirements are addressed in literature routing protocols. Thus, the presented information lays a foundation for further investigations and futuristic proposals for efficient routing approaches in the IoUT.