Longevity-Oriented and Reliable Forwarding Percolation Routing in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

In underwater acoustic sensor networks (UANs), reliable packet delivery is critical in data collection and monitoring of the oceans. It primarily relies on the design of routing protocols to guarantee network durability and connectivity. However, utilizing routing design to achieve enhanced network longevity and reliable packet forwarding is challenging due to the complex underwater environment, unstable link connectivity, high transmission power, and high propagation latency. Thus, we propose a novel routing strategy called the longevity-oriented and reliable forwarding percolation (LRP) routing protocol. The goal of LRP is to ensure reliability by exploring multipath percolation-based routing and extend network longevity by energy control and residual energy optimization. Network reliability can be estimated using a built-in calculation model, and the source node controls energy and records the residual energy to extend the network lifetime. Utilizing an optimization of the network reliability requirement and residual energy, we develop a routing strategy to select the activated link set and node set for each hop in an energy-saving and reliable way. Moreover, a recursive approach is used to avoid the occurrence of void regions. Simulation results exhibit the effectiveness of the power control and routing strategy and demonstrate its superiority over the benchmarks in terms of network longevity and reliability.