Machine learning approaches for underwater sensor network parameter prediction

Abstract

Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) have recently attracted scientists due to its wide range of real -world applications. However, there are design challenges in UASNs, such as limited network lifetime and low communication reliability provoked by the constrained battery supply of sensors and harsh channel conditions in the underwater environments. To meet communication reliability requirements, packet-duplication and multi -path routing algorithms have been recommended in the literature. Furthermore, underwater sensors may convey sensitive data, which must be masked to avoid eavesdropping attempts. To improve network security, cryptographic encryption is the most widely used method. Nevertheless, data encryption needs computations to cipher the data, which consumes extra energy, resulting in a cutback in the life span of the network. To address these challenges, an optimization model has been proposed to evaluate the impacts of multi-path routing, packet duplication, encryption, and data fragmentation on the lifetime of the UASNs. However, the solution time of the proposed optimization model is quite high, and sometimes it cannot come up with feasible solutions. To this end, in this study, different regression and neural network methods have been proposed to predict network param-eters and energy consumptions of underwater nodes as supplementary methods to optimization models. Per-formance evaluations show that the proposed methods yield remarkably accurate predictions and can be used for energy consumption prediction in UASNs.