DMC-MAC: Dynamic multi-channel MAC in underwater acoustic networks

In this article, we focus on the broadcasting task in an underwater acoustic sensor network when a few sensor nodes want to transmit their packets to the nodes within their communication range. Here, we utilize the relative position information of the transmitting nodes to adaptively determine the best channel allocation (multichannel transmission) and packet transmission scheduling that minimizes the collision-free broadcasting duration. Analytical results and examples show that adaptive multichannel packet transmission scheduling greatly reduces the broadcasting duration, and hence improves network efficiency.