An Energy-Harvesting Aware Cluster Head Selection Policy in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) have the potential to prevent disasters by providing access to environmental data, exploited in global warming studies, early warning systems, and industrial monitoring applications. It is of vital importance to sustain the delivery of information in these applications. Underwater wireless sensor networks are main components of these applications, providing continuous delivery of data regarding to the area of interest. However, the harsh nature of underwater environment makes battery replacement impracticable and limits sensor nodes to rely on their battery supply. Therefore, energy consumption is a major concern in underwater sensor networks. To minimize the energy consumption of the network, clustering is an extensively studied technology in underwater sensor applications. Cluster heads (CHs) are selected aiming towards data aggregation and reduction of energy consumption of the network hence increasing network lifetime. In this UWSN, we consider stochastical energy harvesting processes at each sensor node for the energy-aware routing problem in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, a novel cluster head (CH) selection technique is proposed, and CHs are chosen by considering the nodes’ not only position, and residual energy but also expected harvested energy. Numerical results show that the proposed technique reduces energy consumption and extends the network lifetime considerably.