{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,27]],"date-time":"2026-06-27T04:46:42Z","timestamp":1782535602336,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"12","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,20]],"date-time":"2026-06-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1781913600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Surface-deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs) provide a flexible platform for ocean monitoring, but ocean-current-dominant marine forcing causes persistent topology evolution, backbone distortion, and route breakage. This paper proposes an event-driven self-healing routing and topology-maintenance mechanism for drift-prone surface WSNs. The design combines dual-threshold cluster-head handover, CH-HELP backbone repair, Node-HELP member reattachment, loop-free upstream reselection, and conditional global reclustering as a low-frequency corrective layer for long-term topology degradation. Unlike fixed-round reorganization, the proposed framework prioritizes local repair and triggers global refresh only when backbone quality persistently deteriorates. Simulations driven by Taiwan Strait current-dominant flow\u2013wind data show that the full Proposed-Hybrid method reduces the CH-disconnection rate from 8.15% in DARCR to 5.15%, whereas the local-only configuration without conditional global reclustering yields 9.13%. Conditional global reclustering further suppresses late-stage topology degradation, reducing the final-third mean CH-disconnection rate from 16.32% to 8.51% and the late-stage 95th-percentile peak from 34.43% to 17.21%. DARCR remains competitive in some late-stage metrics because of its fixed-period global reorganization.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s26123915","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,24]],"date-time":"2026-06-24T01:03:23Z","timestamp":1782263003000},"page":"3915","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["An Event-Driven Self-Healing Routing and Topology Maintenance Mechanism for Surface-Deployed Wireless Sensor Networks in Ocean Environments"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"26","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0009-6508-9548","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Lei","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 407102, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0000-5383-1631","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tzu-Ming","family":"Hsia","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 407102, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0007-1108-5790","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Chen-Wei","family":"Hsu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 407102, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Pin-Yi","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 407102, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-7844-7907","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qian-Xun","family":"Hong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia University, Taichung City 407102, Taiwan"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"393","DOI":"10.1016\/S1389-1286(01)00302-4","article-title":"Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey","volume":"38","author":"Akyildiz","year":"2002","journal-title":"Comput. 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