DEDG: Cluster-Based Delay and Energy-Aware Data Gathering in 3D-UWSN with Optimal Movement of Multi-AUV

The monitoring of underwater aquatic habitats and pipeline leakages and disaster prevention are assisted by the construction of an underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN). The deployment of underwater sensors consumes energy and causes delay when transferring the gathered sensed data via multiple hops. The consumption of energy and delays are minimized by means of an autonomous unmanned vehicle (AUV). This work addresses the idea of reducing energy and delay by incorporating an AUVs-assisted, three-dimensional UWSN (3D-UWSN) called DEDG 3D-UWSN. Energy in the sensor nodes is saved by clustering and scheduling; on the other hand, the delay is minimized by the movement of the AUV and inter-cluster routing. In clustering, multi-objective spotted hyena optimization (MO-SHO) is applied for the selection of the best sensor for the cluster head, which is responsible for assigning sleep schedules for members. According to the total number of members, an equal half of the members is provided with sleep slots based on the energy and hop counts. The redundancy in the gathered data is eliminated by measuring the Hassanat distance. Then, the moving AUV is able to predict its movement by the di-factor actor–critic path prediction method. The mid-point among the four heads is determined so that the AUV can collect data from four heads at a time. In cases where the waiting time of the CH is exceeded, three-step, inter-cluster routing is executed. The three steps are the discovery of possible routes, ignoring the longest paths and validating the filtered path with a fuzzy–LeNet method. In this 3D-UWSN, the sensed data are not always normal, and, hence, a weighted method is presented to transfer emergency events by selecting forwarders. This work is implemented on Network Simulator version 3.26 to test the results. It achieves better efficiency in terms of data collection delay, end-to-end delay, AUV tour length, network lifetime, number of alive nodes and energy consumption. © 2022 by the authors.