Dynamic multi-channel packet scheduling in an underwater acoustic sensor network

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 communication 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 (multichannel 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 multidepot multiple traveling salesman problem which can be solved sub-optimally through many optimization tools such as Genetic algorithm, and other heuristic methods.