RECRP: An Underwater Reliable Energy-Efficient Cross-Layer Routing Protocol

Area of Science:

• Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs)
• Network protocols
• Acoustic communication

Background:

• Underwater acoustic communication faces challenges like long delays, dynamic topology, limited energy, and communication voids.
• Existing routing protocols struggle to balance energy efficiency and data delivery rates in UWSNs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a Reliable Energy-efficient Cross-layer Routing Protocol (RECRP) for UWSNs.
• To enhance data delivery rates and improve energy efficiency in underwater data transmission.
• To address communication voids and localization challenges in UWSNs.

Main Methods:

• RECRP utilizes physical layer information (e.g., Doppler scale shift, RSSI) for location-free distance estimation, avoiding extra localization hardware.
• A single-copy mechanism minimizes redundant packet overhead.
• An optimal max-min method dynamically adjusts transmission power and channel frequency to balance energy consumption and improve two-hop packet delivery.
• A surface-to-bottom routing establishment method addresses communication voids.

Main Results:

• RECRP achieves a higher data delivery rate compared to Depth-Based Routing (DBR) and Hop-by-Hop Vector-Based Forwarding (HH-VBF).
• The protocol demonstrates improved energy efficiency.
• Location-free operation and single-copy mechanism contribute to reduced overhead and enhanced performance.

Conclusions:

• RECRP offers a robust and efficient solution for data transmission in UWSNs.
• The cross-layer design effectively leverages physical layer information for improved routing.
• The proposed methods successfully tackle key challenges in underwater acoustic networks, leading to superior performance.