ERR-UWSN: energy-efficient and reliable routing for void hole mitigation in underwater wireless sensor networks

Ongoing research is focused on underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs), which hold great promise for various applications to improve human lives. Many sensor nodes have been strategically positioned in rivers and oceans to closely monitor and analyze the underwater ecosystem. UWSNs face significant challenges due to energy limitations, unreliable communication channels, hole occurrence, and low packet delivery ratio. This paper introduces effective energy routing, hole detection and mitigation, and reliable delivery schemes to address these issues. In ERR-UWSN, a single-path routing strategy optimizes energy consumption by selecting the best-sending node through a unique weight function. However, the reliability of this approach is compromised in the harsh and unpredictable submarine environment. To overcome this limitation, co-ERR-UWSN combines cooperative routing with relay nodes between source–destination pairs. A carefully selected weight function ensures low energy consumption, reliability, and optimal node selection for data transmission. The simulation results show that ERR-UWSN is better than CEER, Co-EPRR, and FB-DBR in terms of residual energy, end-to-end delay, energy consumption, and total number of alive nodes. Also, Co-ERR-UWSN has a special advantage in the PDR criterion compared to other schemes.