A Deafness-free MAC Protocol for Underwater Acoustic Communication Network with Directional Antennas

Most of the existing underwater acoustic communication networks use omni-directional transmission technology, which has problems such as poor communication concealment and low throughput, which severely limits network performance. The application of directional transmission technology to the underwater acoustic communication network can effectively solve the various problems existing in the omnidirectional underwater acoustic communication network, but there will also be new problems, such as the deafness problem. Aiming at the problems of low throughput, poor communication concealment and deafness, this paper proposes a deafness-free medium access control (DF-MAC) protocol for underwater acoustic communication networks with directional antennas. In the protocol, each node uses directional and omnidirectional modes to transmit data, and divides the underwater acoustic channel into two sub-channels. By sending a busy tone signal on one of the sub-channels, the neighboring node can distinguish whether the collision encountered is a normal data packet collision or a neighboring node collision, and then take different measures. This protocol can effectively solve the problem of deafness in the underwater acoustic communication network, increase network coverage, and improve communication concealment. The simulation results show that the proposed MAC protocol can significantly improve the throughput performance of the underwater acoustic communication network.