Depth Based Directional Routing Protocol in Underwater Sensor Networks

In order to reduce the end to end packet delay and increase the packet delivery ratio in the Underwater Sensor Network(UWSN), balancing the energy consume of nodes, and extending the network lifetime, a new Depth Based Directional Routing (DBDR) protocol based on the Depth Based Routing (DBR) was proposed. The new protocol sets up a virtual routing pipe with radius w, and its axis is the line between the source node and target node. Only the nodes in the pipe are allowed to forward packets, and the nodes forward packets in the depth based routing protocol. Also, DBDR proposes a forward delay algorithm, sets the depth and rest energy as weight factors. In the comparison experiments with DBR on the NS2, the end to end packet delay of DBDR protocol decreased about 23%~42%, the packet delivery ratio reached to more than 95%. The results show that the protocol not only can better balance the energy consume of nodes and prolong the survival time of the whole network, but also achieve very high packet delivery ratios and much lower end to end delay.