Mobile Sinks Assisted Geographic and Opportunistic Routing Based Interference Avoidance for Underwater Wireless...

Area of Science:

• Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs)
• Acoustic communication channels
• Wireless sensor network routing

Background:

• Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) face significant challenges due to acoustic communication channel limitations like high propagation delay, multi-path fading, and signal attenuation.
• Static forwarder node selection in UWSNs leads to premature node failure, imbalanced energy consumption, and the creation of network voids.
• These issues collectively limit the efficiency and reliability of UWSNs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel mobility-assisted geo-opportunistic routing paradigm for UWSNs that mitigates void occurrence and energy dissipation.
• To enhance the network lifetime and packet delivery ratio in UWSNs by addressing the limitations of traditional routing strategies.
• To improve the overall performance and robustness of underwater wireless sensor networks.

Main Methods:

• Dividing the network volume into logical cubes to minimize interference and enable informed routing decisions for efficient energy use.
• Electing an optimal number of forwarder nodes within each cube based on proximity to the destination to prevent void formation.
• Utilizing mobile sinks to retrieve data packets from void regions, thereby reducing traffic on intermediate nodes.

Main Results:

• The proposed mobility-assisted routing paradigm effectively reduces the probability of void occurrence in UWSNs.
• Imbalanced energy dissipation is minimized, leading to a more balanced energy consumption across network nodes.
• Extensive simulations demonstrate a significant maximization of network lifetime and packet delivery ratio compared to existing methods.

Conclusions:

• The developed mobility-assisted geo-opportunistic routing strategy offers a robust solution for enhancing UWSN performance.
• By incorporating mobility and interference avoidance, the proposed method effectively addresses critical challenges in underwater acoustic networks.
• The findings confirm the approach's capability to significantly improve network longevity and data transmission success rates.