CS-MAC: A Channel Stealing MAC protocol for improving bandwidth utilization in underwater wireless acoustic networks

Abstract

Due to the nature of water, instead of radio wave, sound wave is used for transmission in underwater wireless acoustic networks (UWANs). Based on the analysis of this paper, comparison to the performance in wireless ad hoc networks, hidden terminal problem and exposed terminal problem have a higher impact on that in UWANs. In this paper, a Channel Stealing MAC (CS-MAC) protocol is proposed not only to prevent hidden terminal problem but also to mitigate exposed terminal problem in UWANs. Some geometry theorems are provided for node to increase channel utilization in CS-MAC. Performance is evaluated by ns-2, and simulation results also verify that CS-MAC outperforms in channel utilization and transmission delay.