Performance Analysis of a JSW-based MAC
Protocol for Mobile Underwater Acoustic Networks
Mingsheng Gao
1
,WeiLi
1
andJianLi
1,2
1
College of IoT Engineering, Hohai University, China 213022
2
State Key Laboratory of Acoustics, Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 100190
Emails: {gaoms, liwei, lijian}@hhu.edu.cn
Abstract—The design of the media access control (MAC)
protocols for mobile underwater acoustic networks (UANs) poses
significant challenges due to the characteristics of underwater
acoustic channels such as limited bandwidth, high bit error
rate and long propagation delay. The reasons that existing
underwater MAC protocols have shown poor performance, to
a great extent, lie in the following aspects: 1) the majority of
them are lack of error-control mechanisms; 2) those having error-
control mechanism are largely based on the conventional stop-
and-wait (SW) transmission scheme, which is not efficient. To
combat the effect of these unfavorable factors, we have proposed
an efficient transmission scheme, namely , the juggling-like stop-
and-wait (JSW) transmission scheme, whereby the most efficient
selective-repeat automatic-repeat-request (SR-ARQ) protocol can
be directly applied in underwater data transmissions. In this
paper, we propose a JSW-based MAC protocol f or UANs (called
UJ-MAC) by making use of the multi-channel technique. Specif-
ically, of all the channels, one is used as the control channel
(CCH) while the others are used as data channels (DCH); upon
completion of handshaking on CCH, nodes transmit data in
the JSW manner on DCH. We then develop an analytic model,
deriving a closed-form expression of the throughput of UJ-MAC.
Numerical results show its superior throughput performance as
compared to its counterparts, particularly under the heavy traffic
situations.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, underwater acoustic networks (UANs) have
emerged as a promising technology that uses multi-hop com-
munications to provide cost-efficient network connectivity to
a large area of sea. To date, UANs have compelling for
many applications, such as oceanographic information gather-
ing, environmental monitoring, tsunami alarm and navigation
assistance as well as coastal defense [1]. To make these
applications practical, efficient network protocols are required.
A media access control (MAC) protocol typically plays an
important role in network’s performance. However, existing
MAC protocols for terrestrial communications [2]–[4], cannot
be directly applied in underwater due to the unique charac-
teristics such as limited bandwidth, time-varying multipath
propagation, and large propagation delay. Hence, designing
efficient MAC protocols for underwater acoustic networks is
very challenging.
There has been extensive research on the design of MAC
protocols for underwater acoustic networks in the last decade.
In [5], Guo et al. proposed the propagation-delay-tolerant
collision avoidance protocol (PCAP) protocol, in which a
receiver intentionally waits for a period of time before sending
a clear-to-send (CTS) frame, so as to keep the handshaking
time constant. Peleato et al. [6] exploited the differences in the
node separations, and minimized the length of the handshake
procedure preceding the data transmission, then proposed a
MAC protocol that was suitable for non-synchronized UANs.
Molins et al. [7] introduced the slotted FAMA protocol using
a 4-way (RTS/CTS/DATA/ACK) handshake. Unfortunately,
existing underwater MAC protocols, including the aforemen-
tioned protocols, have not shown their good performance yet.
This can be explained as follows. Firstly, the majority of
them are lack of error-control mechanisms (e.g., [5], [6]).
Second, they are based on the conventional stop-and-wait
(SW) transmission scheme (e.g., [7]), which is very inefficient.
In the past decade, the multichannel technique has received
much attention in underwater communication community ow-
ing to the capability of improving network throughput, re-
ducing end-to-end delay and energy consumption. Zhou et al.
[15] proposed a cooperative multichannel MAC (CUMAC)
scheme for multihop UANs by exploiting the multichannel
technique, with the help of additional busy tone devices. While
in [16], a reservation multichannel multiple access collision
avoidance (RM-MACA) protocol is proposed for UANs.
To combat the above unfavorable factors, we have proposed
an efficient transmission scheme, namely, the juggling-like
stop-and-wait (JSW) transmission scheme, whereby the most
efficient selective-repeat automatic-repeat-request (SR-ARQ)
protocol can be directly applied in underwater data trans-
missions, resulting in very high performance of underwater
acoustic networks [8]. While the JSW transmission scheme
has been applied in mobile underwater acoustic networks in
recent years, which validates its efficiency and efficacy [9]–
[11].
In this paper, we assume there are several channels in
single-hop networks where nodes can hear each other, and
then propose a JSW-based MAC protocol for UANs (called
UJ-MAC) by making use of the multi-channel technique. More
specifically, we choose one of the channels as the control
channel (CCH), and the others as data channels (DCH); nodes
contend for DCHs by making reservation on CCH. Upon
completion of handshaking on CCH, nodes switch to the
DCH that is reserved to transmit data in the JSW manner. To
evaluate the UJ-MAC’s performance, we analyze the through-
put of the UJ-MAC protocol by developing an approximately
analytical model. Numerical results show that the proposed
978-1-4673-8118-5/15/$31.00/©2015 IEEE