Collision-Free Topology Discovery Protocol Based on Node ID for Underwater Acoustic Networks

When all nodes of an underwater acoustic network (UAN) were deployed in the target region, each node knows nothing about the new network but its own node ID, so a network topology discovery protocol that can complete nodes and links discovery for all nodes is necessary and significant. In this paper, an efficient Collision-Free topology discoVEy (CFVE) protocol is proposed to accomplish network topology discovery and obtain the whole network topology for each node, to discover all links and nodes of the network. By utilizing the uniqueness of the node ID in the network, nodes access the channel in a conflict-free manner. Simulation results show that CFVE effectively reduces energy consumption and decreases discovery delay during the network topology discovery. The proposed CFVE protocol is a suitable network topology discovery mechanism for UANs.