Distortion analysis of underwater acoustic sensor networks

The paper studies the distortion performance of multihop underwater acoustic sensor networks. The network is composed of bottom mounted sensors and the sensor to sensor links experience Ricean fading. The distortion is evaluated for the case when there is interference from other sensors in the network. The focus is on the sustainable number of hops in the network for a maximum allowed (target) route distortion requirement. Numerical examples are provided that illustrate the results of the analysis and the regions where the network operation is limited, namely, the coverage-limited region and the interference-limited region.