C-MAC: A TDMA-Based MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Abstract

Different from terrestrial wireless networks that use radio channel, underwater networks utilize acoustic channel, which poses great research challenges in medium access control (MAC) protocol design due to its low available bandwidth and high propagation delay characteristics. In addition, the high bit-error, high transmission energy cost, and complex multi-path effects in underwater environment make it even harder. In this paper, a suitable MAC protocol, named C-MAC (cellular MAC) for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWANs) is proposed. C-MAC is a TDMAbased MAC protocol, which divides networks into many cells. Each cell is distributeda time slot; nodes in a cell, can only transmit packets in the cell's time slot. Experiments show the protocol can avoid collision, minimize the energy consumption, and increase the throughput efficiency.

Advances in Software-Defined Technologies for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks: A Survey

“…Fan et al [112] designed an SDN-based AUV system and implemented a test bed on WaterCom [113], in which the performance of the slotted FAMA [114] and UW-ALOHA [115] is tested and compared. Ghafoor and Koo [116] considered the natural and artificial acoustic systems as the two Primary Users (PUs) of UASNs and designed an SDN-based architecture in which buoys are treated as the Main Controllers (MCs) to maintain the global view of the network.…”

Modified MAC Protocol for low overhead and long delay Underwater Acoustic Communication

“…Yutao Ma and et al [3] they have suggested in their paper that the the high bit-error, high transmission energy cost, and complex multi-path effects in underwater environment make it even harder. In this paper, a suitable MAC protocol, named C-MAC (cellular MAC) for underwater acoustic sensor networks (UWANs) is proposed.…”

A collision-analysis-based energy-efficient routing protocol in 3D underwater acoustic sensor networks

“…C-MAC is a synchronous TDMA-based protocol for multi-hop underwater networks, which divides networks into many cells. A time slot is assigned to each cell; nodes in a cell can only transmit packets in the given time slots [27]. This protocol utilizes channel division with different time stamps, which alleviates the detrimental effect of long propagation delays on network throughput.…”