Different from the mechanism of medium access control (MAC) for the land-based sensor networks, the underwater acoustic sensor network faces problems such as high propagation delay, spatial-temporal uncertainty and high energy consumption. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) is a channel access mechanism based on OFDM multi-carriers modulation technology. In OFDMA, multiple users can make use of the orthogonality of the subchannels to simultaneously access channel for parallel transmission. For underwater multi-hop network scenario, this paper proposes a MAC protocol of the joint relay selection and power allocation (JRSPA-MAC) based on OFDMA mechanism. The proposed protocol is divided into flowing phases: Firstly, the node determines the hop distance from the sink nodes and sends the request when there are packets to be sent. Then forwarding nodes election algorithm is proposed based on the channel condition and the delay information. On this basis, the sending nodes autonomously use the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to allocate its subchannels' power. Secondly, taking advantage of the high underwater acoustic propagation delay, the receiving node reasonably schedule the sending time, makes sure the parallel communication of multiple pairs of nodes in one handshake period. Finally, the destination nodes and the forwarding nodes acknowledge the received packets and completes this data transmission. The simulation results show that compared with the handshake based MAC protocols, the JRSPA-MAC reduces the probability of packet loss caused by data conflicts between nodes. In case of low power consumption, the network throughput are effectively improved, and the average end-to-end delay of the network is reduced. INDEX TERMS Spatial-temporal uncertainty, relay selection, PSO, power allocation, OFDMA.

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Underwater acoustic communication plays an important role in underwater wireless sensor network. Different from terrestrial radio channel, modeling of underwater acoustic channel is very challenging due to its unique and dynamic characteristics. In order to verify the proposed acoustic communication algorithms, a general emulation platform which can reduce the verification cost has a wide application prospect. In this paper, we design a general hardware in the loop underwater communication emulation system based on the LabVIEW and MATLAB software and real acoustic transducer. In the emulation system, LabVIEW calls MATLAB script to achieve algorithm implementation, and then uses DAQmx to send and receive data through the acquisition card. The proposed system supports a variety of modulation and demodulation methods, such as multiple frequency-shift-keying(MFSK), multi-carrier frequency-shiftkeying(MCFSK), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM), etc. In addition, in order to detect frame efficiently, we propose a lightweight frame synchronous algorithm. To verify the function of the systems, lake test and sea test are conducted for different algorithms. INDEX TERMS underwater acoustic communiaction, LabVIEW, MATLAB, suitable platform.