Efficient Clustering Data Collection in AUV-Aided Underwater Sensor Network

In large-scale, far-reaching and long-lasting-monitoring underwater sensor network (UWSN), data collection from underwater nodes is an essential issue. Recent years, AUV-aided clustering underwater data collection mechanism has emerged as a solution to deal with absence of base station and far inter-cluster distance. However, the existing research on efficiency still needs to be further studied and the selection of cluster heads (CH) strongly influences clustering network performance. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient AUV-assisted data gathering scheme (EADGS) to improve network performance which considers both energy consumption and data collection delay. The evaluation metrics we focus on are energy utility and energy efficiency. Specifically in this work, we propose a new CH selection method which is more suitable for large-scale AUV-assisted clustering UWSN. Moreover, we introduce a new transmission strategy in the protocol design to effectively shorten the collection delay by eliminating the AUV's waiting time in each cluster. Simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme and outperform the comparing algorithms.