Energy efficient cluster formulation protocols in clustered underwater acoustic sensor networks

Underwater acoustic sensor networks are widely used for underwater information collection, environmental monitoring and assisted navigation. For energy limited underwater sensor nodes, the design of energy efficient protocols is a key problem in underwater acoustic sensor networks. In this paper, we propose two novel cluster formulation protocols for the Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy Protocol (LEACH) in order to achieve further energy savings. The proposed cluster formulation protocols can significantly reduce the transmission collision probability during the cluster formulation process for underwater environments. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocols outperform the standard LEACH protocol in terms of the network lifetime and the number of alive nodes. The proposed cluster formulation protocols can also be used with other modified LEACH protocols.