Data-Gathering Protocol-Based AUV Path-Planning for Long-Duration Cooperation in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

In recent years, as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have been widely used to prolong the lifetime of underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWASNs) through cooperative data-gathering with sensor nodes, the need for long-range AUVs has become more pronounced to support long-duration cooperation with sensor nodes. Hence, AUV-based data-gathering protocols are required to support the long-duration cooperation by operating the long-range AUVs. However, the recently proposed AUV-based data-gathering protocols do not consider the energy consumption and tour time of AUVs, and what is worse repeat the cluster reconstruction by AUVs for the uniform energy consumption. Thus, via these protocols, AUVs can deplete their energy more quickly before fulfilling their missions. Also, there are path-planning algorithms that have reflected AUV's energy consumption. However, they do not consider AUV's maneuvering that causes AUVs to pay lots of costs, and thus AUVs cannot perform the long-range operation. The objective of this paper is to develop a data-gathering protocol based on AUV path planning that maximizes the mission time for the cooperative data-gathering. To achieve this goal, an enhanced lawn mower pattern path is designed to support both the long-range AUVs and the uniform energy consumption of sensor nodes. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms the recently proposed data-gathering protocol with respect to the long-duration cooperation for data-gathering, thereby increasing the lifetime of UWASNs.