A Novel Approach of Topology Control in Underwater Sensor Networks

The wide spectrum of marine applications has drawn the research community to discuss the several issues of UASNs. Acoustic communication is the most relevant channel for communicating information among sensor nodes that utilize more energy to avoid network failure and render continuous connectivity. The Energy-efficient Topology Control (ETC) is proposed to discuss this issue for UASNs to overcome the coverage and connectivity by improving their lifetime. The proposed approach is divided into the topology construction and topology maintenance phase. In the construction phase, initially, each node recognizes the neighbor nodes and records the range and orientation in an internal database. After that, each node drops some nodes by applying specific conditions and forms the candidate neighbor nodes. Finally, the minimum number of sensor nodes is added to the Topology Member Set (TMS) based on the nodes' orientation, range, energy levels, and topology of the network are created. The topology's maintenance is initiated by the sink node periodically, or any sensor node can send a request message to the sink node at particular conditions. The proposed scheme's performance shows the necessity for minimal sensor nodes for seamless connection and improves coverage area.