Code rate, frequency and SNR optimization for energy efficient underwater acoustic communications

Saving energy is vital in real-world underwater acoustic networks, since a lot of energy is spent to transmit acoustic waves and battery replacement is highly undesirable. In this paper, we study how the energy consumption of underwater acoustic communications can be reduced in order to extend the lifetime of underwater sensor nodes. We analyze the effect of selecting the best frequency within a given operating range for various link distances. We also consider the use of error correcting codes, and optimize the code rate and the signal to noise ratio for each link distance and frequency. Our results show that energy consumption can be greatly reduced by optimizing code rate. In particular, it is shown that uncoded transmissions can be more energy efficient for a considerable range of link distances than fixed rate convolutional codes which are popular in commercial devices. Results also show that the optimal number of average retransmissions is very small (less than one) for all studied link distances. This is an encouraging result, as acoustic communication channels impose much longer delays than RF channels and therefore schemes which require several retransmissions impose unfeasible delay constrains.