An Energy Optimization Clustering Scheme for Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Cooperative Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose an improved energy optimization clustering algorithm (EOCA) for the multi-hop underwater acoustic cooperative sensor networks (UWA-CSN) due to the limited energy supply of the underwater sensor nodes. The proposed EOCA scheme considers multiple factors, such as the number of neighbor nodes, the residual energy of each node, the motion of the sensor nodes caused by the ocean currents, and the distance between the sink node and each underwater sensor node. All these factors are considered within the framework of the multi-hop cooperative communication. Moreover, in the proposed energy optimization scheme, we define a residual energy based maximum effective communication range (reE-MECR) according to the residual energy of each underwater sensor node, which can adaptively control the energy consumption of data transmission for each hop. Compared with the existing clustering scheme, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EOCA scheme can not only prolong the life time of the multi-hop UWA-CSN, but also keep a good communication and networking performance, including the package delivery ratio, the energy consumption efficiency, and the network coverage area. The proposed scheme can obtain both the clustering benefit and the cooperative communication benefit for the multi-hop UWA-SN in terms of energy saving in underwater environments.