A TDMA-Based MAC Protocol in Underwater Sensor Networks

Abstract

Designing of media access control (MAC) protocol is one of the major challenges in underwater acoustic sensor networks. Because of the long and changeful propagation delay, MAC protocols for traditional terrestrial sensor networks are unavailable. We propose a TDMA-based approach which is easy to dispose and energy-efficient. In brief, our MAC protocol includes the lightweight synchronization designed to suit to underwater environments, the defer time to allocate transmitting time of all nodes, the guard time to avoid collision with the sleep strategy to save energy. Simulation results show our MAC protocol feasible and efficient, especially in the high traffic load cases.