Bio-inspired topology control mechanism for autonomous underwater vehicles used in maritime surveillance

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are increasingly used in maritime applications to acquire underwater information. With the guidance of intelligent topology control algorithms, AUVs adjust their positions efficiently such that they achieve desired underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) configurations. A suitable application can be using AUVs in surveillance tasks, where they uniformly spread throughout a harbor entry or around a large civilian or military maritime vessel (e.g., an aircraft carrier) to detect any hostile or unexpected underwater intrusions. Since geographical characteristics are different for each port (shape, depth, etc.) and underwater currents constantly change, manually controlling underwater vehicles for these tasks is not feasible. In this paper, we present a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based topology control mechanism, called 3D-PSO, for AUVs operating in unknown 3D underwater spaces. 3D-PSO uses limited information collected from an AUV's neighborhood to make movement decisions over an unknown 3D space. Each AUV, using our 3D-PSO, is able to adjust its movement speed and direction to achieve a better location towards obtaining a uniform distribution. Simulation experiments demonstrate that, despite the significant variance of topographies of harbor entrances and the undersides of ships, 3D-PSO is an efficient tool to guide AUVs in creating a protection area for a harbor or a maritime vessel.