An Efficient AUV Based Data-Collection Protocol for Underwater Sensor Network

Underwater sensor network (USN) has been shown as a promising technology that can monitor and explore the ocean, but data collecting of USN is limited by the energy void hole problem. In this paper, we propose an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) based data-collection protocol for the USN using cluster head and sub-cluster head structure. The network is divided into clusters, and each cluster is divided into several sub-clusters, they collect all the cluster/sub-cluster nodes information. The AUV would visit all the sub-cluster head nodes (SHs) and cluster heads (CHs) to collect data, in order to reduce the multi-hop acoustic transmission distance of relay nodes, and avoid the hole problem. Artificial bee colony algorithm is used to select optimal SHs for each cluster, so as to realize AUV’s optimal moving tour, save overhead and energy consumption of AUV. The proposed protocol is compared with pre-existing scheme in terms of energy consumption and data delivery rate, the simulation results verify our method for achieving efficient and robust data collecting environment.