Analysis of a Multi-directional Data Access Control System for Underwater Wireless Network using UAN MAC Protocols

Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) face new threats and prospects as a result of recent technological advances. Providing large-scale, and high spatial-temporal resolution of ocean exploration data is highly crucial in environmental monitoring, ocean energy production, and marine science research. Underwater wireless communications, however, face many challenges, including bandwidth constraints, multipath propagation, and fading, long end-to-end propagation latency, and limited power supply with batteries. Underwater monitoring tasks are seriously hampered by data losses due to low link qualities and collisions. Therefore, in UWSN, the design and implementation of an energy-aware, secure, and less propagation delay concern MAC protocol is important. This paper presents a simulation-based performance analysis for a multi-directional data access control system using UAN-CW, UAN-RC, and UANALOHA MAC protocols in an underwater wireless network. A two-way half-duplex acoustic modem has been implemented to analyze the consumed and remaining energy of the network. To assess MAC protocols evaluation, we compared three MAC protocols focusing on throughput, delay, packet delivery ratio, and energy consumption. Simulations were carried out by using the ns3 simulation tool. The simulation results show that UAN-CW MAC protocol outperforms two protocols in respect of throughput, delay, packet delivery ratio, and energy consumption. However, the remaining energy for UAN-RC-MAC is higher than others.