A Distributed Spatial Reuse TDMA Slot Allocation Scheme Based on Topological Knowledge for UASNs

Modern ocean exploration missions rely on underwater acoustic networks, where are mainly charactered by a long propagation delay. An effective and efficient media access control protocol can improve the communication performance in underwater acoustic sensor networks. UASN is a type of underwater acoustic networks with random and almost stable topology. Therefore, we propose an algorithm, distributed spatial reuse time division multiple access (DSRTDMA), based on topological knowledge to adapt to this communication environment and provide better communication throughput. In this protocol, nodes utilize their two-hop topology and slot knowledge to achieve collision-free spatial reuse TDMA in a distributed slot allocation. Meanwhile, topological knowledge is also applied to effectively optimize the local TDMA slot allocation process. Finally, in simulation-based comparison with previous underwater acoustic protocols, our method performs best.