Study of MAC Protocols for a Real Underwater Sensor Network Application

Simulations have proven to be useful in aiding the research in wireless and underwater sensor networks. Simulations can be very convenient also when planning the development and deployment of an underwater sensor network for a real application. However, in order to achieve trustworthy results and to be able to extract correct conclusions, accurate models and real parameters should be used. This paper studies the behaviour of different medium access techniques when they are applied to a real monitoring application. To this end, different MACs where implemented and tested by means of simulation, using accurate models fed with real data.