An energy-efficient data collection protocol with AUV path planning in the Internet of Underwater Things

Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is primarily comprised of acoustic sensor nodes, which are mostly battery-powered. The battery life of sensors is limited and it is inconvenient to recharge. However, these sensor nodes form the Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs), which can be clustered to save a massive amount of energy. Nevertheless, the selection of cluster head (CH) is a key issue as CH has to spend additional energy for performing data collection and aggregation before transmitting the data towards the destination. On the other hand, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are recommended to bridge UWSN with surface devices or internet. Yet, finding a path AUV should follow is an open issue. In this work, we proposed a protocol that utilizes AUV to save energy wasted by sensor nodes during clustering. To be precise, AUV not only collects data, but it is also responsible for nominating the Cluster Head (CH) and creating a wakeup-sleep schedule for clusters. In addition, we present AUV traversal path that is aware of residual energy in the network. Finally, an extensive quantitative evaluation of the proposed scheme against state of the art solutions is given.