Beacon‐based routing protocols for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UW‐ASN) are provisioned with limited bandwidth, long variable propagation delay, limited available energy, highly unreliable acoustic channels, and random node mobility. Consequently, efficient data routing between source destination pair requires UW‐ASN to apply a technology different than terrestrial networks. For the past few years researchers have proposed many robust and efficient routing protocols for UW‐ASN, thus reviewing the challenges posed by stringent underwater environment. These protocols can be broadly categorized into localization based and localization‐free protocols. This paper presents a critical review of beacon‐based localization‐free routing protocols and suggest possible solution to improve the working of studied beacon based protocols. This work categorizes beacon based protocols into hop‐by‐hop, end‐to‐end, single, and multiple parameters based forwarding protocols. This categorization will help to differentiate and identify the requirements for the development of new beacon‐based protocols. Finally, this paper presents performance comparison based on simulation results and outlines the research gap and future directions.     

A reliable and energy‐efficient routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor networks

Recently, underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have attracted much research attention to support various applications for pollution monitoring, tsunami warnings, offshore exploration, tactical surveillance, etc. However, because of the peculiar characteristics of UWSNs, designing communication protocols for UWSNs is a challenging task. Particularly, designing a routing protocol is of the most importance for successful data transmissions between sensors and the sink. In this paper, we propose a reliable and energy‐efficient routing protocol, named R‐ERP²R (Reliable Energy‐efficient Routing Protocol based on physical distance and residual energy). The main idea behind R‐ERP²R is to utilize physical distance as a routing metric and to balance energy consumption among sensors. Furthermore, during the selection of forwarding nodes, link quality towards the forwarding nodes is also considered to provide reliability and the residual energy of the forwarding nodes to prolong network lifetime. Using the NS‐2 simulator, R‐ERP²R is compared against a well‐known routing protocol (i.e. depth‐based routing) in terms of network lifetime, energy consumption, end‐to‐end delay and delivery ratio. The simulation results proved that R‐ERP²R performs better in UWSNs.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

DFR: an efficient directional flooding‐based routing protocol in underwater sensor networks

Unlike terrestrial sensor networks, underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) have salient features such as a long propagation delay, narrow bandwidth, and high packet loss over links. Hence, path setup‐based routing protocols proposed for terrestrial sensor networks are not applicable because a large latency of the path establishment is observed, and packet delivery is not reliable in UWSNs. Even though routing protocols such as VBF (vector based forwarding) and HHVBF (hop‐by‐hop VBF) were introduced for UWSNs, their performance in terms of reliability deteriorates at high packet loss. In this paper, we therefore propose a directional flooding‐based routing protocol, called DFR, in order to achieve reliable packet delivery. DFR performs a so‐called controlled flooding, where DFR changes the number of nodes which participate in forwarding a packet according to their link quality. When a forwarding node has poor link quality to its neighbor nodes geographically advancing toward the sink, DFR allows more nodes to participate in forwarding the packet. Otherwise, a few nodes are enough to forward the packet reliably. In addition, we identify two types of void problems which can occur during the controlled flooding and introduce their corresponding solutions. Our simulation study using ns‐2 simulator proves that DFR is more suitable for UWSNs, especially when links are prone to packet loss. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Heuristic‐based link quality preservation for reliable data delivery

During the link failure conditions in Voice over Internet Protocol applications, the backup of routing information is an important requirement to offer the reliable data delivery to the destination. But the maintenance of multiple paths is the difficult and time consuming for the dynamic environment. But the hops reduction between the source and destination and the interference occurrence causes the transmission in multiple times and that leads to minimum network lifetime. Hence, the preservation of link between the multiple hops is the necessary task to improve the performance. This paper validates the link quality with the 4 measures as received signal strength indicator, bandwidth, node mobility, and the number of connections. The link quality factor (LQF) measurement considers the signal and noise level in 5 operating conditions to allow the automatic identification of closest neighbors and their location. The integration of tabu list and the heuristic‐based fitness search algorithm constructs the routing path and updates the path to identify the link failure. The LQF estimation and the dynamic update provide an efficient data delivery path with less number of iterations. The comparative analysis between the proposed hybrid tabu‐heuristic–based LQF with the existing protocols such as Adhoc On‐Demand Vector (AODV), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and the Interference‐based Topology Control algorithm for Delay‐constrained (ITCD) proves the effectiveness of tabu‐heuristic–based LQF regarding the throughput, energy, packet delivery ratio with the minimum delay, and rebroadcasting probabilities.     

Implementation of depth‐based routing and its enhancement in AquaSim–Next Generation for underwater wireless sensor networks

In the last decade, underwater wireless sensor networks have been widely studied because of their peculiar aspects that distinguish them from common terrestrial wireless networks. Their applications range from environmental monitoring to military defense. The definition of efficient routing protocols in underwater sensor networks is a challenging topic of research because of the intrinsic characteristics of these networks, such as the need of handling the node mobility and the difficulty in balancing the energy consumed by the nodes. Depth‐based routing protocol is an opportunistic routing protocol for underwater sensor networks, which provides good performance both under high and low node mobility scenarios. The main contribution of our work is presenting a novel simulator for studying depth‐based routing protocol and its variants as well as novel routing protocols. Our simulator is based on AquaSim–Next Generation, which is a specialized tool for studying underwater networks. With our work, we improve the state of the art of underwater routing protocol simulators by implementing, among other features, a detailed cross‐layer communication and an accurate model of the operational modes of acoustic modem and their energy consumption. The simulator is open source and freely downloadable. Moreover, we propose a novel and completely distributed routing protocol, named residual energy–depth‐based routing. It takes into account the residual energy at the nodes' batteries to select the forwarder nodes and improve the network lifetime by providing a more uniform energy consumption among them. We compare its performance with that of depth‐based routing protocol and a receiver‐based routing protocol implementing a probabilistic opportunistic forwarding scheme.     

Analysis of tree‐based multicast routing in wireless sensor networks with varying network metrics

Wireless ad hoc and sensor networks are emerging with advances in electronic device technology, wireless communications and mobile computing with flexible and adaptable features. Routing protocols act as an interface between the lower and higher layers of the network protocol stack. Depending on the size of target nodes, routing techniques are classified into unicast, multicast and broadcast protocols. In this article, we give analysis and performance evaluation of tree‐based multicast routing in wireless sensor networks with varying network metrics. Geographic multicast routing (GMR) and its variations are used extensively in sensor networks. Multicast routing protocols considered in the analytical model are GMR, distributed GMR, demand scalable GMR, hierarchical GMR, destination clustering GMR and sink‐initiated GMR. Simulations are given with comparative analysis based on varying network metrics such as multicast group size, number of sink nodes, average multicast latency, number of clusters, packet delivery ratio, energy cost ratio and link failure rate. Analytical results indicate that wireless sensor network multicast routing protocols operate on the node structure (such as hierarchical, clustered, distributed, dense and sparse networks) and application specific parameters. Simulations indicate that hierarchical GMR is used for generic multicast applications and that destination clustering GMR and demand scalable GMR are used for distributed multicast applications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

RQAR: Location-free reliable and QoS-aware routing protocol for mobile sink underwater wireless sensor networks

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have attracted attention from academics and industries due to many applications such as pollution monitoring, military, tsunami warning, and underwater exploration. One of the effective factors in these applications is efficient communication between underwater sensors. But this process is very challenging in UWSNs due to special conditions and underwater harsh environments. Therefore, designing routing protocols for efficient communication between sensors and sink is an important issue in UWSNs. In this context, this paper proposed a location-free Reliable and QoS-Aware Routing (RQAR) protocol for mobile sink UWSNs. RQAR designed using Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and does not require the position information of the sensor nodes, which is cumbersome and difficult to obtain. Proposed protocol considers multiple parameters including link quality, hop count, congestion, and residual energy for qos support, and reliable data delivery RQAR also minimizes the effects of hole occurrence by increasing the transmission range as much as possible and ensures communication stability. The simulation results using NS2 showed the superiority of RQAR in improving end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio, and network throughput compared to the previous methods.     

DRP: An energy‐efficient routing protocol for underwater sensor networks

The features of transmissions in underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) include lower transmission rate, longer delay time, and higher power consumption when compared with terrestrial radio transmissions. The negative effects of transmission collisions deteriorate in such environments. Existing UWSN routing protocols do not consider the transmission collision probability differences resulting from different transmission distances. In this paper, we show that collision probability plays an important role in route selection and propose an energy‐efficient routing protocol (DRP), which considers the distance‐varied collision probability as well as each node's residual energy. Considering these 2 issues, DRP can find a path with high successful transmission rate and high‐residual energy. In fact, DRP can find the path producing the longest network lifetime, which we have confirmed through theoretical analysis. To the best of our knowledge, DRP is the first UWSN routing protocol that uses transmission collision probability as a factor in route selection. Simulation results verify that DRP extends network lifetime, increases network throughput, and reduces end‐to‐end delay when compared with solutions without considering distance‐varied collision probability or residual energy.     

Link stability‐aware reliable packet transmitting mechanism in mobile ad hoc network

To guarantee the QoS of multimedia applications in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), a reliable packet transmitting mechanism in MANET is proposed. In this paper, we introduce an effective link lifetime estimation scheme. According to the current network topology and corresponding estimated link lifetime, the end‐to‐end connection is established adaptively in the best effort manner. Consequently, utilizing the network coding method the relay node combines and forwards the packets on the working path. Furthermore, to keep the balance between the gain in reliability and the amount of redundant packets, the time for sending the redundant packets on the backup path is determined for the link stability intelligently. Simulations show that our mechanisms can provide reliable transmissions for data packets and enhance the performance of the entire network, such as the packet delivery ratio, the end‐to‐end delay and the number of control messages. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

LRP: Link quality‐aware queue‐based spectral clustering routing protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Recently, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) have been considered as a promising approach for monitoring and exploring the oceans in lieu of traditional underwater wireline instruments. As a result, a broad range of applications exists ranging from oil industry to aquaculture and includes oceanographic data collection, disaster prevention, offshore exploration, assisted navigation, tactical surveillance, and pollution monitoring. However, the unique characteristics of underwater acoustic communication channels, such as high bit error rate, limited bandwidth, and variable delay, lead to a large number of packet drops, low throughput, and significant waste of energy because of packets retransmission in these applications. Hence, designing an efficient and reliable data communication protocol between sensor nodes and the sink is crucial for successful data transmission in underwater applications. Accordingly, this paper is intended to introduce a novel nature‐inspired evolutionary link quality‐aware queue‐based spectral clustering routing protocol for UASN‐based underwater applications. Because of its distributed nature, link quality‐aware queue‐based spectral clustering routing protocol successfully distributes network data traffic load evenly in harsh underwater environments and avoids hotspot problems that occur near the sink. In addition, because of its double check mechanism for signal to noise ratio and Euclidean distance, it adopts opportunistically and provides reliable dynamic cluster‐based routing architecture in the entire network. To sum up, the proposed approach successfully finds the best forwarding relay node for data transmission and avoids path loops and packet losses in both sparse and densely deployed UASNs. Our experimental results obtained in a set of extensive simulation studies verify that the proposed protocol performs better than the existing routing protocols in terms of data delivery ratio, overall network throughput, end‐to‐end delay, and energy efficiency.     

基于移动模型的水下传感器网络时间同步算法

水下传感器网络具有高时延、移动性的特点。现有时间同步算法在网络移动性方面考虑不足,时间同步参数计算精度不高。针对该问题,首先分析网络移动性对时间同步参数计算的影响,建立节点移动模型,并在此基础上推导出时间同步参数计算方程;进而提出一种能够应用于水下高时延网络的时间同步算法MM-sync。实验结果表明,与现有算法相比,MM-sync能够在通信量较小的基础上达到较高的精确度,适用于高密度快速运动的水下传感器网络。     

Coverage‐aware connectivity‐constrained unattended sensor deployment in underwater acoustic sensor networks

Careful deployment of nodes in underwater acoustic sensor networks in a distributed manner with the goal of maximized coverage and guaranteed connectivity is a challenging problem because it is very difficult and costly to access the 3D underwater environment. This paper presents a novel algorithm for self‐deployment of nodes in underwater acoustic sensor networks assuming that the nodes are randomly dropped to the water surface and form a densely populated connected network at the water surface. The idea of the algorithm is based on calculating an optimized depth for each node in the network in such a way that the possible sensing coverage overlaps are minimized and the connectivity of final topology is guaranteed. The algorithm has three main phases. In the first phase, nodes are organized in a tree structure that is rooted at the surface station. In the second phase, the depths for all nodes are computed iteratively at surface station. In the final phase, the calculated depths are distributed to nodes so that the nodes start sinking. The performance of the proposed approach is validated through simulation. We observed that the proposed approach performs at least 10% better in terms of network coverage than contemporary schemes in the literature. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Non‐inferior Nash strategies for routing control in parallel‐link communication networks

We consider a routing control problem of two‐node parallel‐link communication network shared by competitive teams of users. Each team has various types of entities (traffics or jobs) to be routed on the network. The users in each team cooperate for the benefit of their team so as to achieve optimal routing over network links. The teams, on the other hand, compete among themselves for the network resources and each has an objective function that relates to the overall performance of the network. For each team, there is a centralized decision‐maker, called the team leader or manager, who coordinates the routing strategies among all entities in his team. A game theoretic approach to deal with both cooperation within each team and competition among the teams, called the Non‐inferior Nash strategy, is introduced. Considering the roles of a group manager in this context, the concept of a Non‐inferior Nash strategy with a team leader is introduced. This multi‐team solution provides a new framework for analysing hierarchically controlled systems so as to address complicated coordination problems among the various users. This strategy is applied to derive the optimal routing policies for all users in the network. It is shown that Non‐inferior Nash strategies with a team leader is effective in improving the overall network performance. Various types of other strategies such as team optimization and Nash strategies are also discussed for the purpose of comparison. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Link‐disjoint paths for reliable QoS routing

The problem of finding link/node‐disjoint paths between a pair of nodes in a network has received much attention in the past. This problem is fairly well understood when the links in a network are only specified by a single link weight. However, in the context of quality of service routing, links are specified by multiple link weights and restricted by multiple constraints. Unfortunately, the problem of finding link/node disjoint paths in multiple dimensions faces different conceptual problems. This paper presents a first step to understanding these conceptual problems in link‐disjoint quality of service routing and proposes a heuristic link‐disjoint QoS algorithm that circumvents these problems. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy‐efficient void avoidance geographic routing protocol for underwater sensor networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) consist of a group of sensors that send the information to the sonobuoys at the surface level. Void area, however, is one of the challenges faced by UWSNs. When a sensor falls in a void area of communication, it causes problems such as high latency, power consumption, or packet loss. In this paper, an energy‐efficient void avoidance geographic routing protocol (EVAGR) has been proposed to handle the void area with low amount of energy consumption. In this protocol, a suitable set of forwarding nodes is selected using a weight function, and the data packets are forwarded to the nodes inside the set. The weight function includes the consumed energy and the depth of the candidate neighboring nodes, and candidate neighboring node selection is based on the packet advancement of the neighboring nodes toward the sonobuoys. Extensive simulation experiments were performed to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed protocol. Simulation results revealed that the proposed protocol can effectively achieve better performance in terms of energy consumption, packet drop, and routing overhead compared with the similar routing protocol.     

Routing design avoiding energy holes in underwater acoustic sensor networks

Interest in underwater acoustic sensor networks (UW‐ASNs) has rapidly increased with the desire to control the large portion of the world covered by oceans. Energy efficiency is one of the major concerns in UW‐ASNs due to the limited energy budget of the underwater sensor nodes. In this paper, we tackle the problem of energy holes in UW‐ASNs while taking into consideration the unique characteristics of the underwater channel. We prove that we can evenly distribute the transmission load among sensor nodes provided that sensors adjust their communication range when they send or forward the periodically generated data. In particular, we propose a balanced routing strategy along with the associated deployment pattern that meticulously determines the load weight for each possible next hop that leads to fair energy consumption among all underwater sensors. Consequently, the energy holes problem is overcome, and hence, the network lifetime is improved. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that addresses the energy hole problem in UW‐ASNs. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

水下无线传感器网络DBR路由协议研究

DBR(Depth Based Routing)协议是水下无线传感器网络中第一个基于深度信息的路由协议。分析了水下无线传感器网络中DBR路由协议特性,详细阐述了DBR协议中的网络拓扑结构、数据转发机制及其存在的一些问题。并简单介绍了目前有关DBR的改进路由协议。     

Graph‐based optimal asynchronous scheduling in large propagation delay underwater acoustic sensor networks

Optimal scheduling is essential to minimize the time wastage and maximize throughput in high propagation delay networks such as in underwater and satellite communication. Understanding the drawbacks of synchronous scheduling, this paper addresses an asynchronous optimal scheduling problem to minimize the time wastage during the transmission. The proposed scheduling problem is analyzed in both broadcast and non‐broadcast networks, which is highly applicable in high propagation delay networks. In broadcast networks, the proposed scheduling method reduces to a graph‐theoretic model that is shown to be equivalent to the classic algorithmic asymmetric traveling salesman problem (TSP) which is NP‐Hard. Although it is NP‐Hard, the TSP is well‐investigated with many available methods to find the best solution for up to tens of thousands of nodes. In non‐broadcast networks, the optimal solution to the scheduling problem considers the possibility of parallel transmission, which is optimized using graph coloring algorithm. The groups obtained through graph coloring are solved using Asymmetric Traveling Salesman algorithm to obtain the optimal schedule. The proposed method efficiently solves the scheduling problem for networks of practical size.     

UW‐MAC: An underwater sensor network MAC protocol

As over 70% of the earth's surface is covered by water, it is desirable to deploy underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) to support oceanic research. UWSNs use acoustic waves and are characterized by long and variable propagation delays, intermittent connectivity, limited bandwidth and low bit rates. Energy savings have always been the primary concern in wireless sensor network protocols; however, there are applications where the latency and throughput are prioritized over energy efficiency and are so significant that the application would not be able to satisfy its requirements without them. Although existing duty‐cycle MAC protocols are power efficient, they introduce significant end‐to‐end delivery latency, provide poor throughput and are not suitable for the challenging environment of a UWSN. In this paper, we utilize CDMA as the underlying multiple access technique, due to its resilience to multi‐path and Doppler's effects prevalent in underwater environments. We propose UW‐MAC, a CDMA‐based power‐controlled medium access protocol that uses both transmitter‐based and receiver‐based CDMA inside a formed cluster, and uses a TDMA schedule to make the cluster heads communicate with the base station. Our MAC algorithm targets the latency and throughput needs in addition to its ability to increase the overall network lifetime. We discuss the design of UW‐MAC, and provide a head‐to‐head comparison with other protocols through extensive simulations focusing on the performance in terms of latency, throughput, and energy consumption. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agent‐based secure routing for underwater acoustic sensor networks

The underwater networks have severe security implications and are vulnerable to various types of attacks such as selective forwarding, wormhole, and sinkhole. Neighbor discovery, a fundamental requirement for routing is vulnerable to wormhole attack, which enables false neighbor acceptance, thereby degrading the routing performance. The proposed agent‐based secured routing scheme enhances the quality of service by discovering the wormhole resilient secure neighbors and route the information through the secure path. This scheme uses 4 agencies, namely, security, routing, underwater gateway, and vehicle, which are embedded with static and mobile agents. (1) Agents in security agency of a node discover secured neighbors by using the direction of arrival estimation and authentication, (2) agents in routing agency of a node establish secured routes from source to surface gateway, (3) agents in Underwater Gateway Agency communicate with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and underwater nodes for key distribution, and (4) vehicle traversing agency in AUV coordinates with Underwater Gateway Agency for changing AUVs traversal to cover the isolated network area. The proposed scheme depicts the improved performance compared to basic neighbor discovery and channel aware routing protocol in terms of failure detection, energy consumption, and overheads.