An effective data-collection scheme with AUV path planning in underwater wireless sensor networks

Data collection in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is a more robust solution than traditional approaches, instead of transmitting data from each node to a destination node. However, the design of delay-aware and energy-efficient path planning for AUVs is one of the most crucial problems in collecting data for UWSNs. To reduce network delay and increase network lifetime, we proposed a novel reliable AUV-based data-collection routing protocol for UWSNs. The proposed protocol employs a route planning mechanism to collect data using AUVs. The sink node directs AUVs for data collection from sensor nodes to reduce energy consumption. First, sensor nodes are organized into clusters for better scalability, and then, these clusters are arranged into groups to assign an AUV to each group. Second, the traveling path for each AUV is crafted based on the Markov decision process (MDP) for the reliable collection of data. The simulation results affirm the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed technique in terms of throughput, energy efficiency, delay, and reliability. © 2022 Wahab Khan et al

Underwater Data Collection Using Robotic Sensor Networks

We examine the problem of utilizing an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to collect data from an underwater sensor network. The sensors in the network are equipped with acoustic modems that provide noisy, range-limited communication. The AUV must plan a path that maximizes the information collected while minimizing travel time or fuel expenditure. We propose AUV path planning methods that extend algorithms for variants of the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP). While executing a path, the AUV can improve performance by communicating with multiple nodes in the network at once. Such multi-node communication requires a scheduling protocol that is robust to channel variations and interference. To this end, we examine two multiple access protocols for the underwater data collection scenario, one based on deterministic access and another based on random access. We compare the proposed algorithms to baseline strategies through simulated experiments that utilize models derived from experimental test data. Our results demonstrate that properly designed communication models and scheduling protocols are essential for choosing the appropriate path planning algorithms for data collection.United States. Office of Naval Research (ONR N00014-09-1-0700)United States. Office of Naval Research (ONR N00014-07-1-00738)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF 0831728)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF CCR-0120778)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF CNS-1035866

Value-of-Information based Data Collection in Underwater Sensor Networks

Underwater sensor networks are deployed in marine environments, presenting specific challenges compared to sensor networks deployed in terrestrial settings. Among the major issues that underwater sensor networks face is communication medium limitations that result in low bandwidth and long latency. This creates problems when these networks need to transmit large amounts of data over long distances. A possible solution to address this issue is to use mobile sinks such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to offload these large quantities of data. Such mobile sinks are called data mules. Often it is the case that a sensor network is deployed to report events that require immediate attention. Delays in reporting such events can have catastrophic consequences. In this dissertation, we present path planning algorithms that help in prioritizing data retrieval from sensor nodes in such a manner that nodes that require more immediate attention would be dealt with at the earliest. In other words, the goal is to improve the Quality of Information (QoI) retrieved. The path planning algorithms proposed in this dissertation are based on heuristics meant to improve the Value of Information (VoI) retrieved from a system. Value of information is a construct that helps in encoding the valuation of an information segment i.e. it is the price an optimal player would pay to obtain a segment of information in a game theoretic setting. Quality of information and value of information are complementary concepts. In this thesis, we formulate a value of information model for sensor networks and then consider the constraints that arise in underwater settings. On the basis of this, we develop a VoI-based path planning problem statement and propose heuristics that solve the path planning problem. We show through simulation studies that the proposed strategies improve the value, and hence, quality of the information retrieved. It is important to note that these path planning strategies can be applied equally well in terrestrial settings that deploy mobile sinks for data collection

Event-Driven Data Gathering in Pure Asynchronous Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

[EN] In underwater acoustic modem design, pure asynchrony can contribute to improved wake-up coordination, thus avoiding energy-inefficient synchronization mechanisms. Nodes are designed with a pre-receptor and an acoustically adapted Radio Frequency Identification system, which wakes up the node when it receives an external tone. The facts that no synchronism protocol is necessary and that the time between waking up and packet reception is narrow make pure asynchronism highly efficient for energy saving. However, handshaking in the Medium Control Access layer must be adapted to maintain the premise of pure asynchronism. This paper explores different models to carry out this type of adaptation, comparing them via simulation in ns-3. Moreover, because energy saving is highly important to data gathering driven by underwater vehicles, where nodes can spend long periods without connection, this paper is focused on multi-hop topologies. When a vehicle appears in a 3D scenario, it is expected to gather as much information as possible in the minimum amount of time. Vehicle appearance is the event that triggers the gathering process, not only from the nearest nodes but from every node in the 3D volume. Therefore, this paper assumes, as a requirement, a topology of at least three hops. The results show that classic handshaking will perform better than tone reservation because hidden nodes annulate the positive effect of channel reservation. However, in highly dense networks, a combination model with polling will shorten the gathering time.Blanc Clavero, S. (2020). Event-Driven Data Gathering in Pure Asynchronous Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. Sensors. 20(5):1-16. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20051407S116205Roy, A., & Sarma, N. (2018). Effects of Various Factors on Performance of MAC Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks. Materials Today: Proceedings, 5(1), 2263-2274. doi:10.1016/j.matpr.2017.09.228Awan, K. M., Shah, P. A., Iqbal, K., Gillani, S., Ahmad, W., & Nam, Y. (2019). Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review of Recent Issues and Challenges. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2019, 1-20. doi:10.1155/2019/6470359Rudnick, D. L., Davis, R. E., Eriksen, C. C., Fratantoni, D. M., & Perry, M. J. (2004). Underwater Gliders for Ocean Research. Marine Technology Society Journal, 38(2), 73-84. doi:10.4031/002533204787522703Petritoli, E., & Leccese, F. (2018). High Accuracy Attitude and Navigation System for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). ACTA IMEKO, 7(2), 3. doi:10.21014/acta_imeko.v7i2.535Nam, H. (2018). Data-Gathering Protocol-Based AUV Path-Planning for Long-Duration Cooperation in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks. IEEE Sensors Journal, 18(21), 8902-8912. doi:10.1109/jsen.2018.2866837Sun, J., Hu, F., Jin, W., Wang, J., Wang, X., Luo, Y., … Zhang, A. (2020). Model-Aided Localization and Navigation for Underwater Gliders Using Single-Beacon Travel-Time Differences. Sensors, 20(3), 893. doi:10.3390/s20030893Wahid, A., Lee, S., Kim, D., & Lim, K.-S. (2014). MRP: A Localization-Free Multi-Layered Routing Protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks. Wireless Personal Communications, 77(4), 2997-3012. doi:10.1007/s11277-014-1690-6Sánchez, A., Blanc, S., Yuste, P., Perles, A., & Serrano, J. J. (2012). An Ultra-Low Power and Flexible Acoustic Modem Design to Develop Energy-Efficient Underwater Sensor Networks. Sensors, 12(6), 6837-6856. doi:10.3390/s120606837Li, S., Qu, W., Liu, C., Qiu, T., & Zhao, Z. (2019). Survey on high reliability wireless communication for underwater sensor networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 148, 102446. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2019.102446Jiang, S. (2018). State-of-the-Art Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocols for Underwater Acoustic Networks: A Survey Based on a MAC Reference Model. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 20(1), 96-131. doi:10.1109/comst.2017.2768802Chirdchoo, N., Soh, W., & Chua, K. C. (2008). RIPT: A Receiver-Initiated Reservation-Based Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 26(9), 1744-1753. doi:10.1109/jsac.2008.081213Zenia, N. Z., Aseeri, M., Ahmed, M. R., Chowdhury, Z. I., & Shamim Kaiser, M. (2016). Energy-efficiency and reliability in MAC and routing protocols for underwater wireless sensor network: A survey. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 71, 72-85. doi:10.1016/j.jnca.2016.06.005Khasawneh, A., Latiff, M. S. B. A., Kaiwartya, O., & Chizari, H. (2017). A reliable energy-efficient pressure-based routing protocol for underwater wireless sensor network. Wireless Networks, 24(6), 2061-2075. doi:10.1007/s11276-017-1461-xSánchez, A., Blanc, S., Yuste, P., Perles, A., & Serrano, J. J. (2015). An Acoustic Modem Featuring a Multi-Receiver and Ultra-Low Power. Circuits and Systems, 06(01), 1-12. doi:10.4236/cs.2015.6100

Covering tour problem with varying coverage: Application to marine environmental monitoring

In this paper, we present a novel variant of the Covering Tour Problem (CTP), called the Covering Tour Problem with Varying Coverage (CTP-VC). We consider a simple graph = ( ,), with a measure of importance assigned to each node in . A vehicle with limited battery capacity visits the nodes of the graph and has the ability to stay in each node for a certain period of time, which determines the coverage radius at the node. We refer to this feature as stay-dependent varying coverage or, in short, varying coverage. The objective is to maximize a scalarization of the weighted coverage of the nodes and the negation of the cost of moving and staying at the nodes. This problem arises in the monitoring of marine environments, where pollutants can be measured at locations far from the source due to ocean currents. To solve the CTP-VC, we propose a mathematical formulation and a heuristic approach, given that the problem is NP-hard. Depending on the availability of solutions yielded by an exact solver, we evaluate our heuristic approach against the exact solver or a constructive heuristic on various instance sets and show how varying coverage improves performance. Additionally, we use an offshore CO2 storage site in the Gulf of Mexico as a case study to demonstrate the problem’s applicability. Our results demonstrate that the proposed heuristic approach is an efficient and practical solution to the problem of stay-dependent varying coverage. We conduct numerous experiments and provide managerial insights.publishedVersio

Five-Tiered Route Planner for Multi-AUV Accessing Fixed Nodes in Uncertain Ocean Environments

This article introduces a five-tiered route planner for accessing multiple nodes with multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that enables efficient task completion in stochastic ocean environments. First, the pre-planning tier solves the single-AUV routing problem to find the optimal giant route (GR), estimates the number of required AUVs based on GR segmentation, and allocates nodes for each AUV to access. Second, the route planning tier plans individual routes for each AUV. During navigation, the path planning tier provides each AUV with physical paths between any two points, while the actuation tier is responsible for path tracking and obstacle avoidance. Finally, in the stochastic ocean environment, deviations from the initial plan may occur, thus, an auction-based coordination tier drives online task coordination among AUVs in a distributed manner. Simulation experiments are conducted in multiple different scenarios to test the performance of the proposed planner, and the promising results show that the proposed method reduces AUV usage by 7.5% compared with the existing methods. When using the same number of AUVs, the fleet equipped with the proposed planner achieves a 6.2% improvement in average task completion rate

Mission Design for Compressive Sensing with Mobile Robots

This paper considers mission design strategies for mobile robots whose task is to perform spatial sampling of a static environmental field, in the framework of compressive sensing. According to this theory, we can reconstruct compressible fields using O(log n) nonadaptive measurements (where n is the number of sites of the spatial domain), in a basis that is "in coherent" to the representation basis [1]; random uncorrelated measurements satisfy this incoherence requirement. Because an autonomous vehicle is kinematically constrained and has finite energy and communication resources, it is an open question how to best design missions for CS reconstruction. We compare a two-dimensional random walk, a TSP approximation to pass through random points, and a randomized boustrophedon (lawnmower) strategy. Not unexpectedly, all three approaches can yield comparable reconstruction performance if the planning horizons are long enough; if planning occurs only over short time scales, the random walk will have an advantage