Performance of Linear TDA-MAC in Full-Duplex Underwater Acoustic Chain Networks

A study of Linear Transmit Delay Allocation MAC (LTDA-MAC) in full-duplex Underwater Acoustic Chain Networks (UACNs) is presented in this paper. LTDA-MAC provides collision free scheduling of packet transmissions in underwater networks. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of LTDA-MAC in linear chain underwater acoustic networks comprising nodes with full-duplex capability, and show the performance gains that can be achieved through improved temporal re-use of an acoustic channel. Simulation results show that more efficient packet scheduling can be achieved for full-duplex scenarios compared with half-duplex scenarios, to provide higher monitoring rates for long range underwater pipelines given low cost, mid range, low rate and low power acoustic modems. This study shows the benefits that could be achieved from the LTDA-MAC protocol simply by switching on the full-duplex capabilities without having to change the protocol.