Modeling the underwater electromagnetic radio frequency channel in the DESERT Underwater network simulator

The possibility of transmitting data in fresh water scenarios using Low-Rate Long Range (LoRa) wireless sensors may enable in the near future new applications, such as wireless sensor deployments for monitoring quay walls, river pillars, and any type of infrastructure and platform deployed in rivers and lakes. In fact, while in salt water this technology has a transmission range of only a few centimeters, making acoustic modems more suitable for this scenario, in fresh water it can cover a range of a couple of meters with standard very low power devices [1]. Another advantage of this technology is the possibility to cross the water-to-air boundary, enabling the communication between underwater and surface devices. The electromagnetic propagation in this scenario has been analyzed in [1], where the authors validated their analytical model thanks to an extensive set of field measurements performed in a swimming pool. This model has been implemented in the DESERT Underwater simulation and experimentation framework to simulate radio frequency underwater network deployments. In this paper we discuss this model and how it was integrated in DESERT, showing a potential application of an underwater LoRa network deployment measuring the network performance via simulations.