Adaptive Token Polling MAC Protocol for Wireless Underwater Networks

The opportunities and applications for a large group of coordinating autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) is exciting and provides greater exploration opportunities than fixed sensor nodes or using a single AUV. The work presented in this paper is the development of a Medium Access Control Protocol for a cluster of small autonomous vehicles working in a centralized network topology. Acoustic communication links are typically used for underwater operations, however are substantially limited by the physics of acoustic propagation which require essentially new scheduling protocols to those being used and developed for packet radio networks. This paper provides a discussion and overview of the essential issues for developing a new MAC protocol for a cluster of closely operating underwater vehicles and presents some performance results for a proposed Adaptive Token Polling Protocol.