Energy and Path-Aware-Reliable Routing in Underwater Acoustic Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs), energy awareness, best path selection, reliability, and scalability are among the key factors that decide information delivery to the sea surface. Existing protocols usually do not combine such performance-affecting factors in information routing. As a result, the performance of such protocols usually deteriorates if multiple performance factors are taken into account. To cope with such performance deterioration, this article proposes two routing protocols for UASNs: energy and path-aware reliable routing (EPRR) and cooperative EPRR (Co-EPRR). Compared with the counterpart systems, the proposed protocols have been designed to deal with the problem of long propagation delays and achieve network reliability. The EPRR scheme uses nodes’ physical distance from the surface with its depth, which minimized the delay of packet transmission. The channel interaction time has been reduced, therefore, reducing unwanted channel effects on the data. Furthermore, the density of the nodes in the upper part of the network prevents data loss and limits the rapid death of the nodes. The second proposed scheme, Co-EPRR, uses the concept of routing information from the source to the destination on multiple paths. In Co-EPRR routing, the destination node can receive more than one copy of the data packet. This reduces unfavorable channel effects during data delivery. Both the schemes show good performance in terms of packet delivery ratio, received packet analysis, and end-to-end delay.