Short-range underwater acoustic communication networks

This chapter discusses the development of a short range acoustic communication channel model and its properties for the design and evaluation of MAC (Medium Access Control) and routing protocols, to support network enabled Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV). The growth of underwater operations has required data communication between various heterogeneous underwater and surface based communication nodes. AUVs are one such node, however, in the future, AUV’s will be expected to be deployed in a swarm fashion operating as an ad-hoc sensor network. In this case, the swarm network itself will be developed with homogeneous nodes, that is each being identical, as shown in Figure 1, with the swarm network then interfacing with other fixed underwater communication nodes. The focus of this chapter is on the reliable data communication between AUVs that is essential to exploit the collective behaviour of a swarm network.