Multi-Buoy Deployment Method Based on an Improved Tuna Swarm Optimizer Enhanced with Fractional-Order Calculus Method for Marine Observation

Ocean buoys play a critical role in marine hydrological, water quality, and meteorological monitoring, with applications in navigation, environmental observation, and communication. However, accurately modeling and deploying a multi-buoy system in the complex marine environment presents significant challenges. To address these challenges, this study proposes an enhanced deployment strategy using the tuna swarm optimizer enhanced with the fractional-order calculus method for marine observation. The proposed method first introduces a detailed observation model that precisely captures the performance of buoys in terms of coverage and communication efficiency. By integrating the observation coverage ratio and communication energy consumption, we establish an optimal multi-buoy deployment model. The proposed method leverages tent chaotic mapping to improve the diversity of initial solution generation and incorporates fractional-order calculus to strengthen its search capabilities. Simulation experiments and statistical analysis verify the effectiveness of the proposed deployment model, with the proposed method achieving the best performance in deploying the multi-buoy system, reaching a final fitness value of 0.190052 at iteration 449, outperforming TSA, PSO, GWO, and WOA. These results highlight the potential of the proposed method in optimizing multi-buoy system deployment in marine observation.