Dual sink vector-based routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor network

Abstract

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have become the seat of researchers’ attention recently due to its proficiency to explore underwater areas and finding different applications for offshore exploration and ocean monitoring. One of the main objectives of each deployed underwater network is discovering the optimized path over sensor nodes to transmit the monitored data to onshore station. Data transmission consumes energy of each node, while energy is limited in UWSNs; energy efficiency is a challenge in underwater wireless sensor network. An available routing protocol which named vector based forwarding protocol (VBF) is enhanced. The main purpose of this routing protocol is balancing the energy consumption in UWSNs. Dual sinks vector based forwarding (DS–VBF) takes both residual energy and location information into consideration as a priority factor to discover an optimized routing path to save energy in underwater networks. The modified routing protocol employs dual sinks on the water surface that lead to improve network lifetime. According to deployment of dual sinks, packet delivery ratio and the average end to end delay also are enhanced. Based on our simulation results in comparison with VBF; average end to end delay reduced more than 80%, remaining energy increased 10%, and increment of packet reception ratio is about 70%.