Energy-Efficient Relay-Based Void Hole Prevention and Repair in Clustered Multi-AUV Underwater Wireless Sensor Network (original) (raw)

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) enable various oceanic applications which require effective packet transmission. In this case, sparse node distribution, imbalance in terms of overall energy consumption between the different sensor nodes, dynamic network topology, and inappropriate selection of relay nodes cause void holes. Addressing this problem, we present a relay-based void hole prevention and repair (ReVOHPR) protocol by multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for UWSN. ReVOHPR is a global solution that implements different phases of operations that act mutually in order to efficiently reduce and identify void holes and trap relay nodes to avoid it. ReVOHPR adopts the following operations as ocean depth (levels)-based equal cluster formation, dynamic sleep scheduling, virtual graph-based routing, and relay-assisted void hole repair. For energy-efficient cluster forming, entropy-based eligibility ranking (E2R) is presented, which elects stable cluster heads (CH...