Location-aware source routing protocol for underwater acoustic networks of AUVs

Acoustic networks of autonomous underwater vehicles (auvs) cannot typically rely on protocols intended for terrestrial radio networks. this work describes a new location-aware source routing (lasr) protocol shown to provide superior network performance over two commonly used network protocols-flooding and dynamic source routing (dsr)-in simulation studies of underwater acoustic networks of auvs. lasr shares some features with dsr but also includes an improved link/route metric and a node tracking system. lasr also replaces dsr's shortest-path routing with the expected transmission count (etx) metric. this allows lasr to make more informed routing decisions,which greatly increases performance compared to dsr. provision for a node tracking system is another novel addition: using the time-division multiple access (tdma) feature of the simulated acoustic modem,lasr includes a tracking system that predicts node locations,so that lasr can proactively respond to topology changes. lasr delivers 2-3 times as many messages as flooding in 72 of the simulated missions and delivers 2-4 times as many messages as dsr in 100 of the missions. in 67 of the simulated missions,lasr delivers messages requiring multiple hops to cross the network with 2-5 times greater reliability than flooding or dsr. © 2012 edward a. carlson et al.