  Routing for low latency underwater acoustic network-communication is
investigated. The application is monitoring of ice-threats to offshore
operations in the Arctic - to provide warnings that enable operators to react
to such threats. The scenario produces relatively high traffic load, and the
network should favour low delay and adequate reliability rather than energy
usage minimization. The ICRP (Information-Carrying based Routing Protocol),
originally proposed by Wei Liang et al. in 2007, is chosen as basis. ICRP
obtains unicast routing paths by sending data payload as broadcast packets when
no route information is available. Thus, data can be delivered without the cost
of reactive signalling latency. In this paper we explore the capabilities of a
slightly enhanced/adapted ICRP, tailored to the ice monitoring application. By
simulations and experiments at sea it is demonstrated that the protocol
performs well and can manage the applications high traffic load - this provided
that the point-to-point links provide sufficient bit rates and capacity
headroom.
