Modeling a shallow water acoustic communication channel using environmental data for seafloor sensor networks

Development of communication channels for underwater sensor networks holds many unique challenges. Communication near the bottom of the ocean is no exception as the effects of reflection and refraction greatly affect how acoustic waves travel between a source and an intended receiver. Deployment and testing in the ocean are difficult and expensive; thus there is a strong reliance on models to aid in design and development of a potential network. Since each ocean region can present very unique challenges, it is of great value to model an environment based on real environmental parameters whenever available. A well prepared channel model will provide the ability to show channel capacity as it relates to node positions, as well as showing the performance of modulation techniques to an environment with propagation characteristics and path arrivals. This channel model will also be implementable into a simulation package to allow for high quality simulation of higher level protocols. The proposed method has proved to be a useful tool in modeling a particular environment and provides insight into underwater sensor node placement and modulation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Part of the preliminary work has been presented at the IEEE Globecom' 2008 [19]. Deployment and testing for ocean sensor networks are difficult and expensive; thus there is a strong reliance on models to aid in design and development of a potential network. Since each ocean region can present very unique challenges, it is of great value to model an environment based on real environmental parameters whenever available. In this paper, we have proposed a method for generating a communications channel model whose parameters are derived from a description of a specific geographic location. The proposed method has proved to be a useful tool in modeling a particular environment and provides insight into underwater sensor node placement and modulation.