A Collision-free MAC protocol based on quorum system for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Abstract

The research of underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs) has gained much attention because of its wide applications, such as environmental monitoring and seabed oil exploration, etc. However, underwater acoustic communication has certain specific characteristics, such as low transmission rate, high delay, and limited energy, which have challenged the data transmission of UASNs. This paper is dedicated to solving the problem of transmission collisions between sensor nodes at the MAC layer in UASNs. A Collision-free MAC protocol for UASNs is proposed, which is a global TDMA-based MAC protocol and optimizes the quorum system based on the network topology to reduce unnecessary time slot allocation and improve the channel utilization. Compared with previous MAC protocol, the result of simulation has shown the superior performance of the proposed MAC protocol both in terms of reducing latency and saving energy consumption.