EFAV-MERD: Expected Forwarding Area Volume and Residual Distance Mathematic Expectation Routing Protocol for UASNs

The design of routing protocols for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) has many challenges arising from long variable propagation delay, high mobility in 3D environments, limited bandwidth, energy-constraint, noise, multi-path and so on. In order to improve the reliability, reduce end-to-end delay and energy cost for UASNs, this paper presents a routing protocol based on expected forwarding area volume and mathematical expectation of residual distance to sink node, EFAV-MERD. In EFAV-MERD, next forwarding nodes are selected based on both the forwarding region volume and the expected residual distance mathematical expectation to improve transmission reliability and reduce transmission overhead. We conduct extensive simulations using NS-3 simulator to verify the effectiveness and the validity of EFAV-MERD.