Data-Gathering Scheme Using AUVs in Large-Scale Underwater Sensor Networks: A Multihop Approach.

In this paper, we propose a data-gathering scheme for hierarchical underwater sensor networks, where multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are deployed over large-scale coverage areas. The deployed AUVs constitute an intermittently connected multihop network through inter-AUV synchronization (in this paper, means an interconnection between nodes for communication) for forwarding data to the designated sink. In such a scenario, the performance of the multihop communication depends upon the synchronization among the vehicles.

A Distributed Data-Gathering Protocol Using AUV in Underwater Sensor Networks.

In this paper, we propose a distributed data-gathering scheme using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) working as a mobile sink to gather data from a randomly distributed underwater sensor network where sensor nodes are clustered around several cluster headers. Unlike conventional data-gathering schemes where the AUV visits either every node or every cluster header, the proposed scheme allows the AUV to visit some selected nodes named path-nodes in a way that reduces the overall transmission power of the sensor nodes. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the performance of the proposed scheme compared with several preexisting techniques employing the AUV in terms of total amount of energy consumption, standard deviation of each node's energy consumption, latency to gather data at a sink, and controlling overhead.