Congestion control and load balancing for cluster based underwater wireless sensor networks

Underwater Wireless Sensor Network (UWSN) has emerged out as one among the widely used network technology for underwater communication. UWSN is basically a self sustaining sensor network, made up of numerous tiny sensor nodes which are linked to one. UWSN is advantageous in performing many applications however it is subjected to challenges due to the non uniform characteristics of the water bodies. Detecting congestion is also a major challenge in UWSN and requires immediate attention as congestion in the network causes impact of high magnitude. In the paper, a congestion control and load balancing technique for cluster based UWSN is proposed. In this technique, the congestion is detected inside the cluster as well as among various clusters, thus referred as intra cluster and inter cluster congestion detection. Further, the congestion is controlled by balancing the traffic load among the network members in order to enhance network performance.