Abstract
In recent years, Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) have garnered attention worldwide due to their significant role in several application domains. However, the unique characteristics of underwater environments pose a challenge when designing routing protocols for UWSNs. Clustering is one of the routing techniques that can help reduce UWSNs' energy consumption. This paper posits a new approach that extends the Low Energy Algorithm Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) clustering protocol. The proposed approach makes use of the localization concept as well as time division multiple access (TDMA) scheduling to enhance the LEACH protocol and adapt it to UWSNs environments. Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms LEACH protocol in terms of energy consumption on average by more than 30%.