An efficient scalable scheduling mac protocol for underwater sensor networks

Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs) utilise acoustic waves with comparatively lower loss and longer range than those of electromagnetic waves. However, energy remains a challenging issue in addition to long latency, high bit error rate, and limited bandwidth. Thus, collision and retransmission should be efficiently handled at Medium Access Control (MAC) layer in order to reduce the energy cost and also to improve the throughput and fairness across the network. In this paper, we propose a new reservation-based distributed MAC protocol called ED-MAC, which employs a duty cycle mechanism to address the spatial-temporal uncertainty and the hidden node problem to effectively avoid collisions and retransmissions. ED-MAC is a conflict-free protocol, where each sensor schedules itself independently using local information. Hence, ED-MAC can guarantee conflict-free transmissions and receptions of data packets. Compared with other conflict-free MAC protocols, ED-MAC is distributed and more reliable, i.e., it schedules according to the priority of sensor nodes which based on their depth in the network. We then evaluate design choices and protocol performance through extensive simulation to study the load effects and network scalability in each protocol. The results show that ED-MAC outperforms the contention-based MAC protocols and achieves a significant improvement in terms of successful delivery ratio, throughput, energy consumption, and fairness under varying offered traffic and number of nodes

A MAC protocol for underwater sensors networks

“The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26401-1_37."Underwater sensor networks are becoming an important field of research, because of its everyday increasing application scope. Examples of their application areas are environmental and pollution monitoring (mainly oil spills), oceanographic data collection, support for submarine geo-localization, ocean sampling and early tsunamis alert. It is well-known the challenge that represents to perform underwater communications provided that radio signals are useless in this medium and a wired solution is too expensive. Therefore, the sensors in these network transmit their information using acoustic signals that propagate well under water. This data transmission type bring an opportunity, but also several challenges to the implementation of these networks, e.g., in terms of energy consumption, data transmission and signal interference. Few proposals are available to deal with the problem in this particular application scenario, and these proposals does not address properly the transmission of underwater acoustic signals. In order to help advance the knowledge in the design and implementation of these networks, this paper proposes a MAC protocol for acoustic communications between the nodes based on a self-organized time division multiple access mechanism. The proposal is still preliminary and it has only been evaluated in the laboratory; however, it represents a highly promising behavior that make us expect interesting results in real-world scenarios.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Cellular Underwater Wireless Optical CDMA Network: Potentials and Challenges

Underwater wireless optical communications is an emerging solution to the expanding demand for broadband links in oceans and seas. In this paper, a cellular underwater wireless optical code division multiple-access (UW-OCDMA) network is proposed to provide broadband links for commercial and military applications. The optical orthogonal codes (OOC) are employed as signature codes of underwater mobile users. Fundamental key aspects of the network such as its backhaul architecture, its potential applications and its design challenges are presented. In particular, the proposed network is used as infrastructure of centralized, decentralized and relay-assisted underwater sensor networks for high-speed real-time monitoring. Furthermore, a promising underwater localization and positioning scheme based on this cellular network is presented. Finally, probable design challenges such as cell edge coverage, blockage avoidance, power control and increasing the network capacity are addressed.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure