Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) support critical applications such as environmental monitoring, offshore exploration, and surveillance; however, their performance is constrained by high propagation delay, limited energy resources, and node mobility caused by ocean dynamics. Many clustering approaches assume static nodes and use fixed-weight objective aggregation, which may reduce adaptability and lead to premature convergence. This paper proposes a cluster-head selection and cluster formation method for UWSNs based on a binary multi-objective Dragonfly Algorithm (BMDA-UWSN). The method considers energy consumption, acoustic latency, and load balance within a Pareto-based optimization framework, thereby reducing dependence on fixed-weight aggregation during the search stage. In addition, the Dragonfly-based optimization process uses dynamically adjusted coefficients to regulate the balance between exploration and exploitation while preserving solution diversity. To represent underwater node displacement, a semicircular mobility model with angular variation of ±45° is incorporated into the simulation scenario. Results obtained for a 100-node network show that BMDA-UWSN achieved better performance than Direct Transmission, LEACH, LEACH-C, SS-GSO, and CDFO-UWSN in terms of network lifetime, packet delivery, latency, and residual energy under the evaluated conditions. In particular, the first node dies at iteration 126 with BMDA-UWSN, compared with iteration 95 for CDFO-UWSN, while packet delivery increases by approximately 20% and latency decreases by about 5%. These findings suggest that BMDA-UWSN is a competitive clustering approach for underwater monitoring scenarios when evaluated under controlled node mobility conditions.
Vázquez et al. (Tue,) studied this question.