Rollout algorithms for data storage- And energy-aware data retrieval using autonomous underwater vehicles

Increasingly effective underwater networks will be required to meet the growing demand for undersea data. The impending exploitation of non-acoustic underwater communication modes and the proliferation of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) will enable the development of underwater networks able to use multiple modes of wireless communications and AUVs to transport data. In this paradigm, planning the routes for AUVs to collect data from underwater sensors becomes critical due to the dynamic nature of the undersea environment and the data collection process. This work proposes a dynamic path planning framework that enables judicious decisions on which network nodes the AUVs should visit next, based on the most recent network-status information. Routing decisions are aware of the AUVs own data-storage and energy constraints. Motivated by the intractability of optimal AUV routing, we propose a rollout algorithm as an enabler for dynamic AUV routing. Numerical tests illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.