Performance of RF underwater communications operating at 433 MHz and 2.4 GHz

The development of Underwater communications networks has become a hot topic in the research over the past few years. Many technologies are promising, however, they suffer from considerable latency, and larger attenuation with distance which degrades the overall network performance. This paper implements a low cost underwater communication network (UWCN) in order to investigate the effect of the operating frequency on the network performance during data transmission. The transmission of data is studied in three scenarios; Air-to-Air, Air-to-Water, and Water-to-Water scenarios. Furthermore, the performance of the network with two operating frequencies is examined in terms of the end-to-end delay, throughput, and packet loss.