Packet scheduling for underwater acoustic sensor network localization

This article considers the problem of packet scheduling for localization in an underwater acoustic sensor network where sensor nodes are distributed randomly in an operating area. Our goal is to minimize the localization time, and to do so we consider two packet transmission schemes, namely collision-free, and collision-tolerant. Through analytical results and numerical examples the performances of these schemes are shown to be comparable. In general, for small packet length (as is the case for a localization packet) and large operating area (above 3km in at least one dimension), the performances of the collision-tolerant protocol is superior to its collision-free counterpart. At the same time, the anchors work independently of each other, and this feature simplifies the implementation process.