An opportunistic message forwarding protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Designing message forwarding protocols for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) is challenging mainly due to high propagation delay, limited bandwidth and high packet loss. Most such protocols operate on the assumption that precise location of sensor nodes is known, which is difficult as GPS waves cannot propagate through water. Moreover, due to the error-prone nature of the acoustic link, message forwarding over multiple hops degrades end-to-end reliability, consumes significant energy and incurs longer delay. In this paper, we propose a location unaware message forwarding technique. It employs opportunistic routing where nodes use accumulate-and-forward paradigm to route data. The technique also exploits nodes' ability to overhear one another's transmission to select reliable route. Our opportunistic model uses independent and local forwarding decisions to select next hop forwarder on-the-fly based on its link transmission reliability and reachability to the gateway. Message ferrying approach is utilized to collect sensor data from gateway nodes of multiple UASNs at high data rate. Our simulation results exhibit its effectiveness and superiority compared with two well established message forwarding algorithms in underwater in terms of packet delivery ratio, routing overhead and energy consumption.