CPR: A Confined Percolation Routing for Distributed Underwater Acoustic Networks

A routing protocol is essential for multihop relay to deliver data and reduce energy consumption in underwater acoustic networks (UANs). However, the low connectivity and high transmission power requirement of underwater acoustic channels pose critical challenges to network connectivity and the lifetime. In this article, we present a confined percolation routing (CPR) protocol that enhances connectivity and energy efficiency in UANs by exploring multiple paths to meet reliability requirements and optimizing transmission power and retransmission counts to reduce energy consumption. The analysis models designed assess the impact of activated node combinations and link reliability on end-to-end (ETE) reliability and energy use. The proposed protocol has been tested in various scenarios, and the results show that the proposed protocol improved the average ETE reliability by 17%, 21%, 7%, 12%, and 44% compared with the benchmark GEDAR, EEGNBR, Dflooding, Multi-SPR, and LEACH protocols in a 5 x 5 network, while consuming lower energy.