Traffic Load-Aware Resource Management Strategy for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a traffic load-aware resource management strategy for underwater wireless sensor networks that uses deep multi-agent reinforcement learning to optimize communication scheduling and parameters, improving efficiency and reliability.

Contribution

It proposes a novel decentralized MARL-based approach with a traffic load-aware mechanism and solution space optimization for underwater networks.

Findings

Demonstrates adaptability of TARM in various scenarios.

Validates effectiveness in supporting efficient communication.

Reduces computational complexity through solution space optimization.

Abstract

Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) represent a promising technology that enables diverse underwater applications through acoustic communication. However, it encounters significant challenges including harsh communication environments, limited energy supply, and restricted signal transmission. This paper aims to provide efficient and reliable communication in underwater networks with limited energy and communication resources by optimizing the scheduling of communication links and adjusting transmission parameters (e.g., transmit power and transmission rate). The efficient and reliable communication multi-objective optimization problem (ERCMOP) is formulated as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (Dec-POMDP). A Traffic Load-Aware Resource Management (TARM) strategy based on deep multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is presented to address this problem. Specifically, a traffic load-aware mechanism that leverages the overhear information from neighboring nodes is designed to mitigate the disparity between partial observations and global states. Moreover, by incorporating a solution space optimization algorithm, the number of candidate solutions for the deep MARL-based decision-making model can be effectively reduced, thereby optimizing the computational complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the adaptability of TARM in various scenarios with different transmission demands and collision probabilities, while also validating the effectiveness of the proposed approach in supporting efficient and reliable communication in underwater networks with limited resources.