Performance analysis of reliable transport schemes joint with the optimal frequency and optimal packet length in underwater sensor networks

In underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), high-delay acoustic channels are used for communications, which introduces new challenges for analyzing and choosing proper reliable transport mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate four key parameters (node distance, communication frequency, packet length and SNR) influencing the transport of UWSNs. Since treating all the four factors equally will make the analysis almost intractable, we propose a four-step analytical framework. In this framework, by optimizing both the communication frequency and packet length, we firstly show that the average energy consumption and the average communication delay of different transport schemes are only related to node distance and SNR. Then when considering practical scenarios, we further demonstrate that the scheme performances are mainly determined by SNR, which rather simplifies the analysis process. In addition, an important metric PEDP is proposed, which is only related to SNR but has the capability of evaluating the performance of transport schemes roundly and effectively. Finally, the numeric results offer us some profound insights for choosing proper transport schemes in UWSNs.