A Robust, Scalable, and Energy-Efficient Routing Strategy for UWSN Using a Novel Vector-Based Forwarding Routing Protocol

Abstract

The Underwater Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) is capable of supporting a wide range of low-data-rate acoustic sensor networks, as well as scalability and energy-efficient routing algorithms. Furthermore, because of the lower bandwidth and longer propagation delays, energy consumption is a major concern with underwater networks. Because radio transmissions are unstable in deep water, a UWSN often communicates via acoustic channels. UWSN features create constraints on data packet transmission and energy-efficient routing. The hardest challenge is creating an effective routing protocol for UWSNs that uses sensor node localization. There have been several routing algorithms reported for identifying nodes via a localization process. This paper proposes a novel vector-based forwarding (NVBF) and efficient depth-based routing (DBR) protocol to provide robust, scalable, and energy-efficient routing. Efficient DBR is a stochastic model that can survive even in acoustic channels with substantial transmission loss. An adjacent node table is created to decrease the energy consumption and end-to-end delay by limiting the adjacent node request generated every single time. The redundant packet transmission is reduced by creating a packet queue which also minimizes the energy. The NVBF algorithm uses a random waiting time to overcome the collision that occurs while sending the acknowledgment packets. Based on the previous sender’s depth and the depth of the own node, the DBR makes packet transmission decisions. The experiments are conducted using the NS3 simulator and the efficiency of the proposed approach is evaluated in terms of propagation delay, network lifetime, energy consumption, and delivery ratio. When compared to the existing techniques such as DBR, VBF, and energy-efficient DBR (EDBR), the proposed methodology offers improvement up to 40% and 30% in terms of propagation delay and delivery ratio.