Abstract
Recently, there has been an increasing interest in monitoring and exploring underwater environments for scientific applications such as oceanographic data collection, marine surveillance, and pollution detection. Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have been proposed as the enabling technology to observe, map, and explore the ocean. The unique characteristics of underwater aquatic environments such as low bandwidth, long propagation delays, and high energy consumption make the data forwarding process very difficult. Moreover, the mobility of the underwater sensors is considered an additional constraint for the success of the data forwarding process. That being said, most of the data forwarding protocols do not realistically consider the dynamic topology of underwater environment as sensor nodes move with the water currents, which is a natural phenomenon. In this research, we propose a mobility prediction optimal data forwarding (MPODF) protocol for UASNs based on mobility prediction. Indeed, by considering a realistic, physically inspired mobility model, our protocol succeeds to forward every generated data packet through one single best path without the need to exchange notification messages, thanks to the mobility prediction module. Simulation results show that our protocol achieves a high packet delivery ratio, high energy efficiency, and reduced end-to-end delay.
Highlights
Motivated by the wish to provide autonomous support for several underwater applications, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have gained remarkable momentum within the research community in the last few years
Proposing an energy-efficient data forwarding protocol that makes judicious use Energy-Efficient Mobility Prediction Routing Protocol of the limited energy budget is crucial as it is responsible for setting a whole path from the source to the sink in a freely floating underwater sensor network
To successfully design a data forwarding protocol for Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs), two issues need to be carefully addressed since they highly affect the performance of the data forwarding protocols, namely, i) how to take into account the mobility of freely floating sensor nodes in dynamic underwater environments to forward one data packet through one single best path without the need to exchange notification messages and ii) what are the forwarder selection criteria to select the best forwarder along the path among all the available ones
Summary
Motivated by the wish to provide autonomous support for several underwater applications, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have gained remarkable momentum within the research community in the last few years. To successfully design a data forwarding protocol for UASNs, two issues need to be carefully addressed since they highly affect the performance of the data forwarding protocols, namely, i) how to take into account the mobility of freely floating sensor nodes in dynamic underwater environments to forward one data packet through one single best path without the need to exchange notification messages and ii) what are the forwarder selection criteria to select the best forwarder along the path among all the available ones. To address the first issue, designing a data forwarding protocol based on a realistic, physically inspired mobility model that captures the dynamics of underwater nodes is crucial. To the best of our knowledge, an MPODF protocol is the first data forwarding protocol that takes into account the realistic mobility pattern of freely floating sensor nodes to predict the best energy-efficient path toward the sink and avoid notification messages’ exchange to establish a path. In Conclusion, we conclude this article with a summary of our contributions
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