SFAMA-MM: A Slotted FAMA based MAC Protocol for Multi-Hop Underwater Acoustic Networks with a Multiple Reception Mechanism

Long propagation delay, limited bandwidth and high bit error rate pose great challenges in Media Access Control (MAC) protocol design for underwater acoustic networks. In this paper, we propose a Slotted FAMA based MAC protocol for multi-hop underwater acoustic networks with a multiple reception mechanism, called SFAMA-MM. It improves the channel utilization by scheduling the transmission of the acknowledgment (ACK) control packet to solve the exposed terminal problem in original Slotted FAMA protocol and introducing a novel multiple reception mechanism. The multiple reception mechanism allows a receiver to receive data packets from multiple neighboring nodes during each round of handshake. Besides, a novel control packet, called NOTICE, is incorporated into the SFAMA-MM protocol to avoid collisions in multi-hop underwater acoustic networks. Our simulations show that the SFAMA-MM is able to achieve higher throughput and lower energy consumption compared with the Slotted FAMA protocol.