An energy efficient interference-aware routing protocol for underwater WSNs

Interference-aware routing protocol design for underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) is one of the key strategies in reducing packet loss in the highly hostile underwater environment. The reduced interference causes efficient utilization of the limited battery power of the sensor nodes that, in consequence, prolongs the entire network lifetime. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient interference-aware routing (EEIAR) protocol for UWSNs. A sender node selects the best relay node in its neighborhood with the lowest depth and the least number of neighbors. Combination of the two routing metrics ensures that data packets are forwarded along the least interference paths to reach the final destination. The proposed work is unique in that it does not require the full dimensional localization information of sensor nodes and the network total depth is segmented to identify source, relay and neighbor nodes. Simulation results reveal better performance of the scheme than the counterparts DBR and EEDBR techniques in terms of energy efficiency, packet delivery ratio and end-to-end delay.