Energy-Efficient Tree-Based Multipath Power Control for Underwater Sensor Networks

Due to the use of acoustic channels with limited available bandwidth, Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs) often suffer from significant performance restrictions such as low reliability, low energy-efficiency, and high end-to-end packet delay. The provisioning of reliable, energy-efficient, and low-delay communication in USNs has become a challenging research issue. In this paper, we take noise attenuation in deep water areas into account and propose a novel layered multipath power control (LMPC) scheme in order to reduce the energy consumption as well as enhance reliable and robust communication in USNs. To this end, we first formalize an optimization problem to manage transmission power and control data rate across the whole network. The objective is to minimize energy consumption and simultaneously guarantee the other performance metrics. After proving that this optimization problem is NP-complete, we solve the key problems of LMPC including establishment of the energy-efficient tree and management of energy distribution and further develop a heuristic algorithm to achieve the feasible solution of the optimization problem. Finally, the extensive simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the network performance under different working conditions. The results reveal that the proposed LMPC scheme outperforms the existing mechanism significantly.

由于使用可用带宽有限的声学信道，水下传感器网络（USNs）常常受到诸如可靠性低、能效低以及端到端分组延迟高等严重的性能限制。在水下传感器网络中提供可靠、高能效和低延迟的通信已成为一个具有挑战性的研究问题。在本文中，我们考虑到深水区的噪声衰减，并提出一种新的分层多径功率控制（LMPC）方案，以降低能耗并增强水下传感器网络中可靠和稳健的通信。为此，我们首先将一个优化问题形式化，以便管理整个网络的传输功率和控制数据速率。目标是最小化能耗，同时保证其他性能指标。在证明该优化问题是NP完全问题之后，我们解决了LMPC的关键问题，包括建立节能树以及管理能量分配，并进一步开发了一种启发式算法来实现优化问题的可行解。最后，进行了大量的模拟实验以评估不同工作条件下的网络性能。结果表明，所提出的LMPC方案明显优于现有机制。