An Adaptive Propagation-delay-tolerant MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

To support the retrieval of accurate and up-to-date information from beneath the world's oceans, it is desirable to deploy underwater sensor networks. However, since radio frequencies (RF) do not propagate well underwater, acoustic channels are employed to support long-distance and low-power co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Guo, Xiaoxing, Frater, Michael R., Ryan, Michael J.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic propagation
Acoustic sensors
Information retrieval
Media Access Protocol
Oceans
Propagation delay
Radio frequency
RF signals
Underwater acoustics
Underwater communication
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Summary:To support the retrieval of accurate and up-to-date information from beneath the world's oceans, it is desirable to deploy underwater sensor networks. However, since radio frequencies (RF) do not propagate well underwater, acoustic channels are employed to support long-distance and low-power communication in underwater sensor networks even though acoustic signals suffer from long propagation delay and have very limited bandwidth. In this paper, we first show the limitation of conventional MAC protocols in the proposed environment; and introduce a new MAC protocol: the adaptive propagation-delay-tolerant collision-avoidance protocol (APCAP). We demonstrate that, in channels with long propagation delay, APCAP significantly outperforms those MAC protocols that are devised for RF-based networks.
DOI:10.1109/OCEANSE.2007.4302236