A Dedicated MAC Protocol Package for Real-Time Ocean Current Field Estimation Using Distributed Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Distributed underwater acoustic sensor networks(UASNs)are envisioned in real-time ocean current velocity estimation.However,UASNs at present are still dominated by post-processing partially due to the complexity of on-line detection for travel times and lack of dedicated medium access control(MAC)protocols.In this study,we propose a dedicated MAC protocol package for real-time ocean current velocity estimation using distributed UASNs.First,we introduce the process and requirements of ocean current velocity estimation.Then,we present a series of spatial reuse time division multiple access(TDMA)protocols for each phase of real-time ocean current field estimation using distributed UASNs,followed by numerical analysis.We divide UASNs into two categories according to their computing ability:feature-complete and feature-incomplete systems.The feature-complete systems that have abundant computing ability carry out the presented MAC protocol package in three phases,whereas the feature-incomplete ones do not have enough computing ability and the presented MAC protocol package is reduced to two phases plus an additional downloading phase.Numerical analysis shows that feature-complete systems using mini-slot TDMA have the best real-time performance,in comparison with feature-incomplete systems and other feature-complete counterparts.Feature-incomplete systems are more energy-saving than feature-complete ones,owing to the absence of in-network data exchange.