Simulation and experimental verification of MAC protocols for underwater acoustic communication networks

Abstract

Media Access Control (MAC) protocols are an important part of network operations and should be selected according to the application and scale of the network. In this paper we have studied two such protocols and present the results of simulation and experiments. We simulated two MAC protocols in OMNeT++ network simulator to compare the performance of ALOHA and MACAW protocols for underwater acoustic communication network. The statistics in terms of network throughput, channel utilization, end-to-end delay, and percentage of successful message sending have been obtained by changing packet length, network load, and network scale. The analysis of the data from simulation shows that ALOHA protocol is appropriate for smallscale networks or networks having reduced load. MACAW protocol is better suited for large-scale networks.For verification of our simulation results of MAC protocols, we conducted experiments at testing pool in Harbin Engineering University and Qiandao Lake in Hangzhou China. We verified some of the functions such as network communication data storage, network communication data download, routing table storage, routing table update, and loopback communication. Experimental results showed that the MAC protocols selected for UWAC network are appropriate and the network is functioning in a proper manner.

RAP-MAC: A Robust and Adaptive Pipeline MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic String Networks

“…To implement a practical and reliable real-world underwater acoustic string network, designing an effective Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is vital. However, MAC protocol design faces many challenges [11][12][13]. First, underwater acoustic channels are considered to be highly challenging, characterized by low propagation speed, limited bandwidth, multipath, large Doppler effect, high noise, and spatio-temporal variability.…”