An energy-efficient distributed node clustering routing protocol with mobility pattern support for underwater wireless sensor networks

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSN) has received more attention in exploring promising technologies for scientific data collection of underwater natural resources with maximum link reliability. For effective communication among the sensor nodes, reliable data delivery based routing protocols have been designed to avoid long-distance communication in large network areas. But the network-based protocols suffer from many constraints like limited distance-dependent bandwidth, defective channels and high delay. Furthermore, the supplied batteries have limited power and also data transmission cannot be exploited in the long-distance network areas due to the harsh underwater environment. Therefore, a clustering-based mobility pattern routing protocol is required to link long-distance communication over depth areas with less consumed energy and less delay. This paper proposed an energy-efficient Distributed Node Clustering Mobility Pattern Routing Protocol (DNC-MPRP) to reach the long-distance depth area for data transmission with less energy consumption and avoid inaccurate routing paths using mobility patterns in UWSN. This approach consists of several phases: network initialization, Cluster Head (CH) formation and data transmission. In DNC-MPRP, the network is partitioned into two dense areas for near and far distance communications. Then the network configuration initializes the rectangle mobility pattern which is used to reach the surface sink with less delay. Next, the CH formation initializes the cluster area in the large and common area to maintain energy in the collected member nodes. Lastly, the data transmission is adopted only when the coverage area is in the transmission range of the network field. Simulation result depicts that the DNC-MPRP approach would be evaluated in terms of Energy Consumption (EC), Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), End to End Delay (E2ED) and Network Lifetime (NL) based on the variation of nodes, different transmission range, mobile sink, data rate and payload data with high PDR of 95%, high NL of 1200 s, low E2ED of 9.5 s and less EC than existing methods.