PR-MAC Protocol based on Priority in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Underwater acoustic sensor networks can be used disaster prevention and environmental monitoring systems in underwater environments. Because, the underwater environment is different from the ground, the long propagation delay, low transfer rates and limited bandwidth characteristics should be considered. In this, paper will propose the MAC protocol that allocates time slot into each node according to priority policy through the period of contention-free slot reservation in underwater acoustic sensor networks in order to avoid collision and minimize energy consumption waste. We perform mathematical analysis to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocol with regard to the collision probability, the energy consumption by collision, throughput and channel utilization. We compare the proposed protocol with the conventional protocol, and the performance results show that the proposed protocol outperforms the conventional protocol.