Dynamic Multi-Channel Packet Scheduling in an Underwater Acoustic Sensor Network

Abstract—This article considers the broadcasting task in an underwater acoustic sensor network when a few sensor nodes want to transmit their packets to the nodes within their commu-nication range in a collision-free manner. Here, the information about sensor nodes ’ position and their maximum communication range has been used to minimize the broadcasting time. We have shown that the concept of dynamic channel splitting (multi-channel communications with variable number of channels) has a great impact on the reduction of the broadcasting time. Furthermore, it is shown that in a single hop network, the broadcasting time minimization can be modeled as the multi-depot multiple traveling salesman problem which can be solved sub-optimally through many optimization tools such as Genetic algorithm, and other heuristic methods. I