FSE2R: An Improved Collision-Avoidance-based Energy Efficient Route Selection Protocol in USN Prasant Ku. Dash 1 , Lopamudra Hota 2 , Madhumita Panda 3 , N. Z. Jhanjhi 4,* , Kshira Sagar Sahoo 5 and Mehedi Masud 6 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Sambalpur University, Odisha, 768019, India 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, NIT, Rourkela, Odisha, 769008, India 3 Department of Computer Science, G.M University, Sambalpur, Odisha, 768001, India 4 School of Computer Science and Engineering, SCE, Taylor’ s University, Subang Jaya, 47500, Malaysia 5 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SRM University, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh, 522502, India 6 Department of Computer Science, College of Computers and Information Technology, Taif University, Taif, 21944, Saudi Arabia *Corresponding Author: N. Z. Jhanjhi. Email: noorzaman.jhanjhi@taylors.edu.my Received: 01 November 2021; Accepted: 16 February 2022 Abstract: The 3D Underwater Sensor Network (USNs) has become the most opti- mistic medium for tracking and monitoring underwater environment. Energy and collision are two most critical factors in USNs for both sparse and dense regions. Due to harsh ocean environment, it is a challenge to design a reliable energy effi- cient with collision free protocol. Diversity in link qualities may cause collision and frequent communication lead to energy loss; that effects the network perfor- mance. To overcome these challenges a novel protocol Forwarder Selection Energy Efficient Routing (FSE2R) is proposed. Our proposal’ s key idea is based on computation of node distance from the sink, Residual Energy (RE) of each node and Signal to Interference Noise Ratio (SINR). The node distance from sink and RE is computed for reliable forwarder node selection and SINR is used for analysis of collision. The novel proposal compares with existing protocols like H2AB, DEEP, and E2LR to achieve Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of through- put, packet delivery ratio and energy consumption. The comparative analysis shows that FSE2R gives on an average 30% less energy consumption, 24.62% better PDR and 48.31% less end-to-end delay compared to other protocols. Keywords: USN; energy efficiency; collision avoidance; MAC; SINR 1 Introduction The Ocean is the most captivating unexplored area that everyone is eager to discover. Underwater is like a huge forest that is fascinating and complex. Acoustic signals are used for transmission and communication [1]. The Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs) is a network infrastructure application in the deep ocean that detects, collects, and transmits data, providing information to an onshore location for remote data collection. USNs are viewed as a promising area of research because they can be applied in various applications such as monitoring, navigation, surveillance, and tracking in industrial, environmental, and military environments This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Computer Systems Science & Engineering DOI: 10.32604/csse.2023.024836 Article ech T Press Science