Impact of ARQ on the Performance of Underwater Acoustic MIMO Mobile Networks

The paper considers the average frame error probability (FEP) of mobile underwater acoustic networks consisting of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV’s) with multiple transmitters and receivers (MIMO). The MIMO AUV's utilize multihop transmissions to route the information through the network. It is assumed that an automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol is implemented on a hop-by-hop basis. In particular, the stop & wait protocol is considered. The mobility model is direction persistent. Each channel experiences frequency dependent path loss, Ricean fading and interference. Numerical examples illustrate the average route FEP performance. Keywords—underwater acoustic networks, mobility, MIMO, frame error probability, ARQ.