Earq: Energy Aware Routing for Real-Time Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor networks consist of a certain number of sensors and vehicles that interact to collect data and perform collaborative tasks. Designing energy-efficient routing protocols for this type of networks is essential and challenging because sensor nodes are powered by batteries, which are difficult to replace or recharge, and because underwater communications are severely affected by network dynamics, large propagation delays and high error probability of acoustic channels In this paper, the authors propose EARQ, which is a novel routing protocol for under water sensor networks. It provides real-time, reliable delivery of a packet, while considering energy awareness. In EARQ, a node estimates the energy cost, delay and reliability of a path to the sink node, based only on information from neighboring nodes.