The specific characteristics of underwater environments introduce new challenges for networking protocols. In this paper, a specialized architecture for underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) is proposed and evaluated. Experiments are conducted in order to analyze the suitability of this protocol for the subaquatic transmission medium. Moreover, different scheduling techniques are applied to the architecture in order to study their performance. In addition, given the harsh conditions of the underwater medium, different retransmission methods are combined with the scheduling techniques. Finally, simulation results illustrate the performance achievements of the proposed protocol in end-to-end delay, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption, showing that this protocol can be very suitable for the underwater medium.
Keywords: energy efficiency; fault tolerance; routing; scheduling and retransmission; underwater sensor networks.