Model for energy consumption by a broadband shallow-water acoustic communications network

Abstract

A multistatic active sonar system with several widely distributed sensors must share information between the sensors. Acoustic communication is a viable method to share information and is particularly appropriate when the sensors are mobile. A potential drawback is that a significant fraction of the total energy budget for the system might be consumed just by sending information between the sensors. In the present work, an energy consumption model is developed that is appropriate for incoherent acoustic communication in shallow water. The model builds upon the foundation established by Sozer et al. [IEEE J. Oceanic Eng. 25, 72–83 (2000)], but uses an improved sub-model for acoustic propagation. The sub-model includes environmental factors like the sound speed profile in the water column and the composition of the seabed. By exploiting the waveguide invariant concept, the broadband nature of the communications signals can be included efficiently in the calculation. Numerical results demonstrate how relaying messages between intermediate sensors can save substantial energy compared to direct communications. The calculations also show that energy consumption can vary by more than an order of magnitude depending on the seabed composition. [Work supported by ONR.]