A Power Control based Handshake-Competition MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Underwater acoustic sensor networks are research hotspots in the areas of cognitive oceans and military reconnaissance. The long propagation delay, limited Energy, and low bit rate pose great challenges to the MAC protocol design for the underwater acoustic networks. So in order to solve the problems of the limited energy of underwater acoustic sensor networks and the short lifetime of nodes, a Power Control based Handshake-Competition MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Networks (PC-MAC) is proposed and analyzed. The protocol dynamically adjusts the transmission power according to the channel environment and the distance between nodes. The protocol reduces the energy consumption of data transmission, and ultimately achieves the purpose of prolonging the service life of nodes. The simulation results show that the proposed protocol can significantly improve the energy efficiency of the network.