Toward avoiding energy holes in UnderWater Acoustic Sensor Networks

UnderWater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UW-ASNs) require protocols that make judicious use of the limited energy budget of the underwater sensor nodes. In this paper, we tackle the problem of energy holes in UW-ASNs. We show that we can balance the energy consumption through the network provided that sensors can use multiple transmission ranges when they send or forward the periodically generated data. In particular, we suppose that sensors can adjust their communication ranges up to three possible levels and we determine the set of possible next hops with the associated load weights that lead to a fair energy consumption among all underwater sensors. Hence energy holes can be avoided and consequently the network lifetime is highly increased.