EBVBF: Energy Balanced Vector Based Forwarding Protocol

Nowadays, one of the biggest problems of underwater networks is the energy consumption in the communication of sensor nodes. Moreover, sensor nodes rescue operations because of the battery starvation is a high-cost activity. With this in mind, this paper proposes a routing protocol called energy balanced vector-based forwarding (EBVBF), whose main objective is to increase the lifetime of an underwater network and to balance the energy consumption of the sensor nodes, avoiding the creation of void zones that can lead to complete interruption of communication between certain nodes and sink nodes, therefore reducing the number of rescue operations and maintenance in an underwater environment, an element very important in the places of difficult access. A simulated performance analysis is carried out by using the proposed protocol in an environment with nodes in movement showing the gain in energy saving in a balanced way and the increase of network lifetime.