Abstract:The blue ocean has been extensively attention as land resources have become depleted. Underwater acoustic communication network (UACN) can effectively achieve underwater information interaction. It is an important tool for understanding, developing and utilizing the ocean, which plays an important role in promoting the construction of “smart ocean”. However, the severe constraints of network communication resources (e.g., energy, channel, relay) will not be able to meet the long-term and effective operation requirements of UACN. Without increasing the cost of network hardware, the resource allocation technology can effectively improve network performances such as the energy efficiency and the anti-interference. It has great research significance and application value under the background of rapidly increasing demand for underwater information interaction. Therefore, the resource allocation has gradually become a research hotspot in the field of UACN. The UACN system was firstly introduce, and then the technology and significance of UACN resource allocation were discussed. Finally, the development status, trend and challenges of UACN resource allocation were focused on.