Flexible localization protocol for underwater wireless sensor networks using hybrid reward evaluation scheme

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) must recognize sensor nodes and estimate their locations. A reliable underwater data forwarding relay is difficult to find in the acoustic communication environment. Underwater sensor node localization research has yet to accomplish accuracy, propagation error, restricted coverage, and QoS. A novel solution for static and dynamic UWSNs called the Reward-based distance vector Hop Localization (RDVHL) protocol is proposed. The reward for each underwater sensor node is computed periodically using the different reward measures in RDVHL. RDVHL first divides the deployed UWSNs dynamically into several clusters. Then Anchor Nodes (AN) are localized for each cluster using the reward measures periodically. After localizing the AN, they broadcast the localization information to the ordinary sensor nodes. The ordinary nodes are localized during the route formation for reliable data transmission using periodically computed reward scores. The correct localization of the sensor nodes enables the fast transmission of the underwater data from the source to the intended sink nodes. The proposed reward-based approach achieves accurate sensor node localization and reduces void communication and collisions in the acoustic communication channels. The RDVHL protocol outperforms the state-of-the-art in average throughput, average latency, average accuracy, and average energy consumption. RDVHL throughput increases by 12.54%. The average energy consumption drops 12.82%, localization inaccuracy drops 29.44%, and communication latency drops 3.72%.