Research Article EM-Based High Speed Wireless Sensor Networks for Underwater Surveillance and Target Tracking Kumudu Munasinghe, 1 Mohammed Aseeri, 2 Sultan Almorqi, 2 Md. Farhad Hossain, 3 Musbiha Binte Wali, 3 and Abbas Jamalipour 4 1 Faculty of Education, Science, Technology and Mathematics, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT 261, Australia 2 National Centre for Sensors and Defense Systems Technologies, King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia 3 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh 4 School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Kumudu Munasinghe; kumudu.munasinghe@canberra.edu.au Received 17 June 2016; Revised 16 November 2016; Accepted 14 December 2016; Published 26 February 2017 Academic Editor: Jos´ e A. Somolinos Copyright © 2017 Kumudu Munasinghe et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) are considered as tangible, low cost solution for underwater surveillance and exploration. Existing acoustic wave-based UWSN systems fail to meet the growing demand for fast data rates required in military operations, oil/gas exploration, and oceanographic data collection. Electromagnetic (EM) wave-based communication systems, on the other hand, have great potential for providing high speed data rates in such scenarios. Tis paper will (1) discuss the challenges faced in the utilization of EM waves for the design of tactical underwater surveillance systems and (2) evaluate several EM wave-based three-dimensional (3D) UWSN architectures difering in topologies and/or operation principles on the performance of localization and target tracking. To the best of our knowledge, this is the frst of its kind in the feld of underwater communications where underwater surveillance techniques for EM wave-based high speed UWSNs have been investigated. Tus, this will be a major step towards achieving future high speed UWSNs. 1. Introduction In terms of underwater surveillance, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) are considered as a tangible, low cost solution [1, 2]. In these networks, sensor nodes are deployed at various depths in underwater and communicate with other networked foating nodes (e.g., buoys) on the sur- face and other communications equipment installed in mar- itime and airborne vehicles (e.g., ships, aircraf, and satellites) [3, 4]. Most of today’s underwater surveillance systems are equipped with sonar-array based target tracking algorithms [5–8]. Sonar arrays are based on acoustic wave technology since they are capable of providing long-range communica- tions in underwater [9, 10]. Acoustic waves however result in poor performance in shallow water environments and have extremely low data rates [11] and therefore deemed imprac- tical for on-demand real-time target tracking applications. Moreover, acoustic transmission is afected by multipath propagation, susceptibility to environmental noise, turbidity, salinity gradients, pressure gradients, and adverse impact on marine life. Terefore, electromagnetic (EM) transmissions have been considered as a better alternative for UWSNs [12]. Despite having a relatively shorter range, EM technology is a promising technology for UWSNs as they have the ability to provide much higher data rates than those achievable with acoustic waves in harsh environments with no direct path. Tis new breed of UWSNs can provide real-time deep-sea oil and gas explorations, military surveillance, search and rescue operations, and environmental monitoring. A comparison on the advantages and disadvantages of acoustic and EM wave- based communications is presented in Table 1. By and large, underwater surveillance systems used within a military context have three main characteristics. Te three key characteristics are detection, identifcation, and tracking submerged targets (localization). Target detection is how the network identifes a potential target within its Hindawi Journal of Sensors Volume 2017, Article ID 6731204, 14 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/6731204