Deploying a multi-hop underwater acoustic sensor network (UASN) in a large area brings about new challenges in reliable data transmissions and survivability of network due to the limited underwater communication range/bandwidth and the limited energy of underwater sensor nodes. In order to address those challenges and achieve the objectives of maximization of data delivery ratio and minimization of energy consumption of underwater sensor nodes, this paper proposes a new underwater routing scheme, namely AURP (AUV-aided underwater routing protocol), which uses not only heterogeneous acoustic communication channels but also controlled mobility of multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). In AURP, the total data transmissions are minimized by using AUVs as relay nodes, which collect sensed data from gateway nodes and then forward to the sink. Moreover, controlled mobility of AUVs makes it possible to apply a short-range high data rate underwater channel for transmissions of a large amount of data. To the best to our knowledge, this work is the first attempt to employ multiple AUVs as relay nodes in a multi-hop UASN to improve the network performance in terms of data delivery ratio and energy consumption. Simulations, which are incorporated with a realistic underwater acoustic communication channel model, are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, and the results indicate that a high delivery ratio and low energy consumption can be achieved.

A single-hop LoRa (Long Range) network suffers from a limitation in coverage caused by high signal attenuation when deployed in industrial areas, which often include wireless unfriendly zones (WUZs). Thus, some end nodes in WUZs may fail to transmit data to the gateway (GW). This paper proposes a reliable two-hop real-time LoRa protocol in which the nodes in WUZs transmit data to another node that relays the received data to the gateway for reliable transmission. The proposed protocol allocates transmission slots to nodes with different data transmission periods, so the nodes not only achieve high reliability but also meet time constraints or periods for delivering data to a gateway. In this case, 1-hop nodes (one hop away from GW) may consume more energy than 2-hop nodes (two hops away from GW). For energy balancing, the protocol uses a data aggregation approach to minimize the number of transmissions. We show by analysis that the proposed protocol can support up to 200 nodes using a single-channel GW when every node sends one packet with a payload of 30 bytes within 17 seconds, and 30% of the nodes are 2-hop nodes. In addition, we show by experiment that the proposed protocol can achieve high reliability in data transmission.

Recently, LoRa (Long Range) technology has been drawing attention in various applications due to its long communication range and high link reliability. However, in industrial environments, these advantages are often compromised by factors such as node mobility, signal attenuation due to various obstacles, and link instability due to external signal interference. In this paper, we propose a new multi-hop LoRa protocol that can provide high reliability for data transmission by overcoming those factors in dynamic LoRa networks. This study extends the previously proposed two-hop real-time LoRa (Two-Hop RT-LoRa) protocol to address technical aspects of dynamic multi-hop networks, such as automatic configuration of multi-hop LoRa networks, dynamic topology management, and updating of real-time slot schedules. It is shown by simulation that the proposed protocol achieves high reliability of over 97% for mobile nodes and generates low control overhead in topology management and schedule updates. The protocol was also evaluated in various campus deployment scenarios. According to experiments, it could achieve high packet delivery rates of over 97% and 95%, respectively, for 1-hop nodes and 2-hop nodes against node mobility.

A wireless MAC protocol that uses a topology-dependent slot schedule is vulnerable to link failures. This becomes severer in industrial fields due to node mobility and various obstructions unfriendly to wireless communication. The proposed protocol allocates a big sharable slot to each tree level, producing a topology-independent schedule that makes the protocol highly responsive to the changes of topology. Then, the nodes at the same level use CSMA/CA for data transmission and channel hopping to cope with the varying condition of a channel. The use of CSMA/CA and channel hoping makes data transmission reliable against internal and external interferences. Another feature is that every node gets its sharable slot using a slot generation function independently of other nodes. Simulations and experiments verify that the proposed protocol achieves good performance in terms of packet delivery ratio and energy efficiency against the variation of multipath fading, various external sources of interference, and node mobility.

This paper proposes and implements a new TDMA-based MAC protocol for providing timely and reliable delivery of data and command for monitoring and control networks. In this kind of network, sensor nodes are required to sense data from the monitoring environment periodically and then send the data to a sink. The sink determines whether the environment is safe or not by analyzing the acquired data. Sometimes, a command or control message is sent from the sink to a particular node or a group of nodes to execute the services or request further interested data. The proposed MAC protocol enables bidirectional communication, controls active and sleep modes of a sensor node to conserve energy, and addresses the problem of load unbalancing between the nodes near a sink and the other nodes. It can improve reliability of communication significantly while extending network lifetime. These claims are supported by the experimental results.