Design of a new MAC protocol for underwater acoustic network

This paper deals with a new MAC protocol for underwater acoustic networks. The proposed MAC protocol has a cluster structure with a master node and multiple slave nodes. In addition the proposed MAC protocol consist of a hybrid network structure that combines a contention free period based on TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) with a contention period. The protocol we propose provides the following: a beacon packet for supervising the network, a guard period time between time slots to avoid packet collision, the time tag for estimating the propagation delay with a master node, the time synchronization of nodes, the entering and leaving of network, and the communication method among nodes. In this paper, we propose a basic concept for a new hybrid MAC protocol and show the example of adaptation for AUV which is the representative mobile device of underwater acoustic network.