An efficient data delivery mechanism for AUV-based Ad hoc UASNs

Abstract

Existing 3D Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) are either fixed having nodes anchored with the seabed or a combination of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and a fixed UASN where AUVs are controlled to move along paths for data collection. Existing data delivery protocols for such AUV equipped networks are designed in a way where AUVs act as message ferries. These UASNs are deployed for a specific service such as asset (e.g., oil pipes, shipwreck) monitoring and event detection. For a coordinated data collection, to deploy a network for any service like information discovery in an ad hoc manner, it requires a 3D UASN consisting of only AUVs and the movement of an AUV needs to be controlled by another AUV through commands. To our knowledge, no such data delivery protocol required for a 3D UASN comprising only AUVs exists in the current literature that can efficiently handle data collection and delivery. To address this research gap, in this paper, an AUV-based technique for ad hoc underwater network, namely AUV-based Data Delivery Protocol (ADDP), is introduced which ensures data delivery within a given time-constraint by controlling node (i.e., AUV) movement at each hop through commands of a node. The performance of the proposed protocol has also been evaluated and compared with existing relevant protocols in terms of packet delivery ratio, routing overhead and energy consumption considering various network scenarios and sizes. Results exhibit outstanding performance improvement achieved by the proposed protocol for all metrics.