Towards energy-efficient UAV-assisted 5G internet of underwater things

Abstract

Adhering to the requirements of Fifth Generation (5G) communication for seamless data gathering, especially from underwater resources, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)-assisted 5G Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) have been leaving an everlasting impression. However, the resource-constrained underwater sensor nodes limit the potential of IoUT for reliable data dissemination due to their shorter operational period. To extenuate this concern, in this paper we present an Energy-Efficient Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted Routing Architecture (EEURA) for 5G IoUT. The Cluster Head (CH) is selected using Improved-Tunicate Swarm Algorithm (I-TSA). We use Energy-Harvesting (EH)-enabled nodes and a single UAV for data collection from the underwater deployed sensor nodes to extenuate hot-spot problem. It is evident from the simulation investigation that EEURA performs exclusively better than the state-of-the-art routing methods in IoUT.