AN EFFICIENT MAC PROTOCOLFOR DATA COLLECTION IN UNDERWATERWIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

One ofthe fundamental differences between the terrestrial radio frequency (RF) signal and underwater acoustic sig­ nal is long propagation delay. Thispaper is focused on a scheduling scheme for regional data collection in under­ water acoustic sensor networks. Longpropagation delay ofthe acoustic signal causes a serious problem for trans­ mission scheduling. In thispaper, we propose an efficient transmission scheduling algorithm using theproperty of long propagation delayfor real-time data collection which is critical to tactical surveillance applications. We show through the simulation that theproposed scheme reduces total transmission time and increases the network efficien­ cy significantly.