Hybrid Energy Efficient Routing Protocol for UWSNs

Underwater communications had much attention in the last decade, as it has been used in civil and military applications. Nowadays, design a full coverage with a high energy-efficient network is one of the most challenges in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) due to the low data rate with high energy consumption of the acoustic waves. Meanwhile, electromagnetic, magnetic induction or optical waves have high data rates and low energy consumption but for a short communication distance. In this paper, based on the complementary features of different underwater communication technologies, a hybrid underwater communication network is proposed as an enabler of high energy efficient with considerable communication distance. Whereas the acoustic waves can be used for transmitting control signals. Meanwhile, optical waves can be used for high data rate multi-hop data packets transmission. Based on the proposed hybrid network architecture, a Hybrid Energy Efficient Routing Protocol (HEERP) has been proposed in this paper. The high potency of the proposed routing protocol is proved regarding packet delivery ratio, average network throughput, average energy consumption and average energy efficiency over conventional routing protocols via numerical simulation.