SC 2 R: Strategic cooperative cluster-based routing for Internet of Underwater Things

Abstract

Oceanographic data gathering, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, catastrophe avoidance, aided navigation, and tactical surveillance are all expected to benefit from the Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT). However, the viability of various applications in underwater scenarios is possible only if the routing among the sensor nodes employed is strategically optimized. This paper proposes Strategic Cooperative Routing for IoUT (SC2R) that employs a cooperative node for data collection from each Cluster-Head (CH). CH selection is done through the energy and distance parameters. The cooperative nodes are positioned on water surface, other nodes being placed in the underwater terrain. This cooperative routing helps in the data collection for the time-critical scenario as it avoids multi-hop communication among the sensor nodes underwater. Due to decreased number of hops of communication, the delay in data transmission is reduced. The simulation results illustrate the efficacy of the proposed routing technique in comparison to competitive algorithms. The proposed protocol outperforms state of art routing protocols in terms of Network Lifetime and End to End Delay (EED).