A self-healing clustering algorithm for underwater sensor networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) is a novel networking paradigm to explore aqueous environments. The characteristics of mobile UWSNs, such as low communication bandwidth, large propagation delay, floating node mobility, and high error probability, are significantly different from terrestrial wireless sensor networks. Energy-efficient communication protocols are thus urgently demanded in mobile UWSNs. In this paper, we develop a novel clustering algorithm that combines the ideas of energy-efficient cluster-based routing and application-specific data aggregation to achieve good performance in terms of system lifetime, and application-perceived quality. The proposed clustering technique organizes sensor nodes into direction-sensitive clusters, with one node acting as the head of each cluster, in order to fit the unique characteristic of up/down transmission direction in UWSNs. Meanwhile, the concept of self-healing is adopted to avoid excessively frequent re-clustering owing to the disruption of individual clusters. The self-healing mechanism significantly enhances the robustness of clustered UWSNs. The experimental results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed algorithm.