Multi-AUV Collaborative Data Collection Algorithm Based on Q-Learning in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Intelligent data collection is a key component in underwater acoustic sensor networks, and it plays an important role in seabed environment monitoring, marine resource detection and marine disaster early warning. Owing to the particularities of the underwater environment, such as reduced infrastructure and noisy communication channels, the data collected by underwater nodes are more efficiently transmitted to a control center on the surface by way of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). However, with the increasing complexity of the underwater tasks, using a single AUV for data collection cannot meet the requirements of low latency and low power consumption. To solve this problem, a multi-AUV collaborative data collection algorithm that reduces the load of data collection task on a single AUV is proposed. The algorithm is divided into two stages: multi-AUV task allocation and Q-learning-based AUV path planning. The data transmission of the clusters is regarded as a set of different tasks, which are assigned to the AUVs for completion. Subsequently, path planning is performed to guide the AUVs, so that the tasks are completed promptly and at a reduced cost. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can leverage the energy consumption of a network and extend its lifetime. The performance of the proposed algorithm in energy consumption is increased by about 10%, and the delay of data collection is also significantly reduced.