Power control for underwater acoustic MC-CDMA communication networks using the improved PSO algorithm

Multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) can be applied in underwater acoustic communication networks to combat the narrow bandwidth of the underwater acoustic channel and multipath fading. Power control is one of the key technologies for the MC-CDMA communication networks. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective power control scheme based on improved particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for underwater acoustic MC-CDMA communication networks. The distance of different nodes to base station (BS) is not same, which can cause near-far effect. So we propose a fitness function which is consisted of power consumption and SINR (the signal to interference plus noise ratio) on the receiver. The method effective reduces the power consumption of nodes and decreases the near-far effect. Comparing with the scheme without power control, our results show that the proposed power control algorithm can be used in underwater acoustic channel. Not only the power consumption is lower, but also the bit error rate (BER) performances are better.