Modeling power control and anypath routing in underwater wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have been proposed for autonomous monitoring of underwater environments. Despite the recent advances on underwater acoustic modems, unreliable data delivery and high energy cost are two critical research problems that remain in UWSNs. In this context, energy-efficient and reliable data collection protocols must be proposed for UWSNs. In this paper, we propose to combine power control and anypath routing in order to simultaneously address both problems in UWSNs. We propose an analytical that considers the characteristics of power control, multiple next-hop forward nodes of anypath routing, underwater acoustic channel and aquatic environment. The model devised in this work is a mathematical tool to enable researchers and practitioners to study important performance metrics of UWSN applications, when power control and anypath routing are jointly explored. Moreover, it is helpful to provide insights for the future design of joint power control and anypath routing protocols for UWSNs. Numerical results show that for a reduced number of next-hop candidate nodes, data delivery can still be improved by increasing the transmission power of the sender. Conversely, for a high number of next-hop candidates nodes, a high transmission power leads to energy waste.