Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: An Energy-Efficient Clustering Routing Protocol Based on Data Fusion and Genetic Algorithms

Due to the limited battery energy of underwater wireless sensor nodes and the difficulty in replacing or recharging the battery underwater, it is of great significance to improve the energy efficiency of underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs). We propose a novel energy-efficient clustering routing protocol based on data fusion and genetic algorithms (GAs) for UWSNs. In the clustering routing protocol, the cluster head node (CHN) gathers the data from cluster member nodes (CMNs), aggregates the data through an improved back propagation neural network (BPNN), and transmits the aggregated data to a sink node (SN) through a multi-hop scheme. The effective multi-hop transmission path between the CHN and the SN is determined through the enhanced GA, thereby improving transmission efficiency and reducing energy consumption. This paper presents the GA based on a specific encoding scheme, a particular crossover operation, and an enhanced mutation operation. Additionally, the BPNN employed for data fusion is improved by adopting an optimized momentum method, which can reduce energy consumption through the elimination of data redundancy and the decrease of the amount of transferred data. Moreover, we introduce an optimized CHN selecting scheme considering residual energy and positions of nodes. The experiments demonstrate that our proposed protocol outperforms its competitors in terms of the energy expenditure, the network lifespan, and the packet loss rate.