An Adaptive-Location-Based Routing Protocol for 3-D Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) has a wide range of application prospects in civil and military fields. As a key enabling technology of IoUT, underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) feature a variety of unique characteristics, including high latency, high mobility, and low bandwidth. All these problems pose challenges in the design of efficient and effective routing protocols. To address such challenges, we propose an adaptive-location-based routing protocol named ALRP for 3-D UASNs. First, the ALRP defines a forwarding area to confine the scope of the candidate forwarders. Second, it adaptively calculates the forwarding probability to reduce redundant forwarding. Third, it adaptively obtains the forwarding delay to determine the forwarding order. By using these ways, ALRP can find the beneficial relays to forward packets, and increase the forwarding efficiency. We implement the ALRP and evaluate its performance in the Aqua-sim. Simulation results show that the ALRP significantly improves the network performance compared to several existing protocols.