Simulating communication during multiple AUV operations

Communication between multiple autonomous underwater vehicles is challenging and best addressed by considering it as a networking problem. Treating the vehicles as the nodes of an ad hoc network consolidates much of the complexity of the communication system in the network's routing protocol. We discuss the many issues associated with the development of routing protocols and consider some existing protocols. The number and duration of in situ trials necessary during the development, testing, evaluation and refinement of these protocols makes a simulation tool invaluable. The requirements of such a simulator are compared with the capabilities of several existing simulators. We propose the design for a new simulator and discuss its implementation.