Cooperative fault-detection mechanism with high accuracy and bounded delay for underwater sensor networks

This paper proposes a cooperative fault-detection mechanism for detecting cluster-head failures in cluster-based Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs). The proposed detection mechanism aims to accurately and fast detect the failure of a cluster head in order to avoid unnecessary energy consumption caused by a mistaken detection. For this purpose, it allows each cluster member to independently detect the fault status of its cluster head and then employs a distributed agreement protocol to reach an agreement on the fault status of the cluster head among multiple cluster members. It runs concurrently with normal network operation by periodically performing a detection process at each cluster member. To reduce energy consumption, it uses a time division multiple access medium access control (TDMA MAC) protocol and makes use of the data periodically sent by a cluster head as the heartbeats for fault detection. A couple of forward and backward time-division-multiplexing (TDM) frames are specially structured for enabling multiple cluster members to reach an agreement within two frames in each detection process. Moreover, a schedule generation algorithm is also proposed for a cluster head to generate the transmission schedule in the forward and backward frames. Through simulation results, we show that the proposed detection mechanism can achieve high detection accuracy under high packet loss rates in the harsh underwater environment, and can detect a cluster-head failure faster than a traditional fault-detection mechanism within a delay bound of two TDM frames. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.