An Efficient Geo-Routing-Aware MAC Protocol Based on OFDM for Underwater Acoustic Networks

Abstract

Performing an effective Media Access Control (MAC) protocol suffers from strong dependencies between Underwater Acoustic Networks’ upper and lower layers: 1) the network layer frequently uses geo-routing protocols, which do not provide the specific next-hop for MAC protocols, resulting in serious data collisions. 2) in such scenarios with the unknown next-hop, fixed Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) resource does not adapt to the changing environment, and degrades network performance (OFDM is a mature modulation technology in the physical layer). However, there is scant research on MAC protocols considering the network layer and the physical layer simultaneously, to solve data collisions and resource allocation. To this end, we present a cross-layer MAC protocol to integrate Geo-routing protocols and OFDM technology (GO-MAC) at the same time. GO-MAC employs a handshake scheme to allocate optimal communication resources and select the next-hop concurrently. Firstly, we formulate the OFDM resource allocation as a joint optimization problem based on transmission mode, subcarrier spacing, guard interval, and transmission power, to decrease transmission delay and energy consumption. Then a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions based Heuristic algorithm (KKT-H) is proposed to solve this problem. Finally, we consider node congestion and channel quality to assist geo-routing protocols with the next-hop selection, and decrease packet collisions. Simulation results show that our protocol matches geo-routing protocols and OFDM technology better than the state-of-the-art protocols, providing higher end-to-end reliability with lower costs.