Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) play a vital role in ocean monitoring and exploration. However, harsh underwater conditions and frequent topology changes caused by node and sink mobility pose significant challenges for reliable routing. Conventional routing protocols that depend on global route reconstruction and static paths generate excessive control overhead and degrade performance in large-scale underwater environments. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient virtual cell-based mobile-sink adaptive routing (VC-MAR) protocol for UWSNs. The sensing field is logically partitioned into a three-dimensional grid of virtual cells, where a cell-gateway is elected in each cell to construct a low-overhead routing backbone. To support sink mobility, VC-MAR introduces a localized route-adjustment mechanism that updates only the affected backbone segments rather than reconstructing the entire routing structure. By confining routing updates to neighboring cells influenced by sink movement, the proposed protocol significantly reduces control packet exchanges while ensuring stable and reliable data delivery. Simulation results show that the proposed VC-MAR improves the packet delivery ratio by up to 20% and reduces routing control overhead by about 34% compared with traditional grid-based routing methods. These results confirm the suitability of VC-MAR for dynamic and realistic underwater sensing scenarios.
The development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the underwater environment leads to underwater WSN (UWSN). It has severe impact over the research field due to its extensive and real-time applications. However effective execution of underwater WSNs undergoes several problems. The main concern in the UWSN is sensor nodes’ energy depletion issue. Energy saving and maintaining quality of service (QoS) becomes highly essential for UWASN because of necessity of QoS application and confined sensor nodes (SNs). To overcome this problem, numerous prevailing methods like adaptive data forwarding techniques, QoS-based congestion control approaches, and various methods have been devised with maximum throughput and minimum network lifesp
... Show MoreThe development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in the underwater environment leads to underwater WSN (UWSN). It has severe impact over the research field due to its extensive and real-time applications. However effective execution of underwater WSNs undergoes several problems. The main concern in the UWSN is sensor nodes’ energy depletion issue. Energy saving and maintaining quality of service (QoS) becomes highly essential for UWASN because of necessity of QoS application and confined sensor nodes (SNs). To overcome this problem, numerous prevailing methods like adaptive data forwarding techniques, QoS-based congestion control approaches, and various methods have been devised with maximum throughput and minimum network lifesp
... Show MoreEnergy efficiency is a significant aspect in designing robust routing protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A reliable routing protocol has to be energy efficient and adaptive to the network size. To achieve high energy conservation and data aggregation, there are two major techniques, clusters and chains. In clustering technique, sensor networks are often divided into non-overlapping subsets called clusters. In chain technique, sensor nodes will be connected with the closest two neighbors, starting with the farthest node from the base station till the closest node to the base station. Each technique has its own advantages and disadvantages which motivate some researchers to come up with a hybrid routing algorit
... Show MoreReliable data transfer and energy efficiency are the essential considerations for network performance in resource-constrained underwater environments. One of the efficient approaches for data routing in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) is clustering, in which the data packets are transferred from sensor nodes to the cluster head (CH). Data packets are then forwarded to a sink node in a single or multiple hops manners, which can possibly increase energy depletion of the CH as compared to other nodes. While several mechanisms have been proposed for cluster formation and CH selection to ensure efficient delivery of data packets, less attention has been given to massive data co
<p>Energy and memory limitations are considerable constraints of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The limited energy supplied to network nodes causes WSNs to face crucial functional limitations. Therefore, the problem of limited energy resource on sensor nodes can only be addressed by using them efficiently. In this research work, an energy-balancing routing scheme for in-network data aggregation is presented. This scheme is referred to as Energy-aware and load-Balancing Routing scheme for Data Aggregation (hereinafter referred to as EBR-DA). The EBRDA aims to provide an energy efficient multiple-hop routing to the destination on the basis of the quality of the links between the source and destination. In
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