Abstract
Reliability is key factor for mission critical data applications. In poor underwater environment, where fading and noises are unavoidable, it is very difficult to have error free data transmission. This paper presents a novel cooperative routing protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSN) called Adaptive Cooperation in Energy Efficient Depth Based Routing (ACE). ACE aims to reduce high error rate and enhance throughput via retransmission through cooperative relay nodes. Retransmission is performed only when destination receives erroneous copy in direct transmission from the source node. Relay nodes are selected on the basis of depth and residual energy of sensor nodes. Simulation results show the superior performance of ACE over conventional non retransmission routing protocol in terms of throughput, packet drop and packet acceptance ratio.