Bidirectional Prediction-Based Underwater Data Collection Protocol for End-Edge-Cloud Orchestrated System

Tian Wang, Dan Zhao, Shaobin Cai, Weijia Jia, Anfeng Liu

Abstract: The proliferation of advanced underwater technology and the emergence of various cloud services promote the horizon of cloud-based underwater acoustic sensor network (UASN). Sending end data to cloud for analysis is becoming a prominent trend, driving cloud computing as an indispensable computing paradigm. However, UASN bears tremendous burdens with respect to data collection from end to cloud, such as large transmission power consumption and high delay, which makes it difficult to meet the delay-sensitive and context-aware service requirements by using cloud computing alone. To this end, a two-level bidirectional data prediction model for end-edge-cloud orchestration is proposed in this article. The mobility and computing ability of edge elements are exploited to analyze and collect data. Edge elements predict the future data based on historical information and trend to decrease acoustic communication. Moreover, a data collection protocol with mobile edge elements is designed. With this protocol, computing paradigms are shifted from centralized cloud to distributed edge, and the differentiated capability of heterogeneous devices is exploited. After extensive experiments, the results show that the data collection cost is dramatically decreased while the bandwidth utilization is increased, which is critical for underwater acoustic communication. The proposed method and protocol strike a good balance between data accuracy and energy consumption for the new end-edge-cloud orchestrated system.