## 5 Simulation Results
This was due to the availability of the best forwarder nodes in both protocols. As the rounds progressed, nodes began to die in both protocols. However, the energy hole repairing process replaces the dead nodes by active nodes in EHRDBR. Figure 4: Total number of dead nodes in the network. This reduces the packet loss in EHRDBR. As a result, the number of packets received at the sink became higher in EHRDBR than in the NEFP. Figure 7 shows the plot of the total packet drop. As a result of a variable transmission range and interference mitigation strategy, LF-IEHM had the lowest packet drop. This was because when a sender node does not find any neighbor node to forward data packets to, it increases its transmission range to include one or more neighbors. This reduces the packet drop. Furthermore, the unique holding time of every node minimizes the simultaneous transmission of packets by two or more nodes. This results  
Figure 5: Total energy consumption of the network. Figure 6: Total number of packets received at the sink. in packet drop due to interference. Initially, the NEFP had a lower packet drop than EHRDBR because of forwarding packets in the restricted zone on the basis of the forwarding probability. This approach forwards the packets from the source to the destination along the shortest paths and avoids packet routing over unnecessary paths. This, in turn, reduces the probability of packet drop. However, forwarder nodes soon die in the restricted zone in the NEFP because of the frequent forwarding of data. At the same time, when nodes begin dying in EHRDBR, its energy hole repairing mechanism replaces energy holes with live nodes. Additionally, redundant packet transmission in EHRDBR reduces the probability of packet drop. In essence, packet drop decreased in EHRDBR and increased in the NEFP in later rounds. Figure 8 shows the plot of the packet delivery ratio. Following the pattern of packets received at the sink and packet drop, LF-IEHM had the highest packet delivery ratio. The delivery ratio was higher for the NEFP than EHRDBR for the first several rounds but decreased as the rounds progressed as a result of the death of nodes in the restricted forwarding zone in the NEFP and energy hole repairing and redundant packet transmissions in EHRDBR. Figure 9 shows the plot of end-to-end delay. Due to forwarding in the restricted forwarding zone from source to destination, NEFP has the smallest end-to-end delay. In EHRDBR, a sender node selects forwarder nodes within the depth threshold. This caused the greatest end-to-end delay in EHRDBR. LF-IEHM had a greater delay than the NEFP as a result of the selection of forwarder nodes in the full transmission range rather than in a restricted zone as in the NEFP. The selection of forwarder nodes in the restricted zone results in choosing the shortest possible paths from a source to a destination. This reduces the end-to-end delay. LF-IEHM had a shorter end-to-end delay than EHRDBR because the former takes into account the response time of the nodes in addition to the depth (water pressure level) as in EHRDBR. This ensures that when two or more forwarder nodes have the same depth, the sender node chooses the forwarder node with the shorter response time. As a result, the end-to-end delay was smaller in LF-IEHM than in EHRDBR. Figure 7: Total packet drop in the network.