Secured Multi-Objective Optimisation-Based Protocol for Reliable Data Transmission in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) requirements have increased beyond applications in environmental monitoring and underwater exploration to military surveillance. The complex underwater environment raises many challenges due to high propagation delays, limited bandwidth, high error rates, and dynamic underwater currents. Most traditional clustering algorithms do not consider the multifaceted requirements of UWSNs. In most cases, a single objective is optimised at the cost of other essential factors, such as energy consumption, network robustness, and data transmission reliability. This paper proposes a new UWSN protocol based on the tiger beetle optimisation (TBO) algorithm for multiobjective K-means clustering (TBO-MOK). The protocol comprises adaptive search procedures motivated by tiger beetle hunting behaviors and lightweight AES-based encryption for data security. TBO-MOK is excellent in multiobjective optimisation since it simultaneously considers performance metrics of more than one aspect. Many problems are resolved by TBO-MOK, which optimises all the involved performance metrics to provide balanced energy usage and robust communication links. Comprehensive simulati