On communication requirements in underwater surveillance networks

We envision an underwater surveillance network with autonomous sensor nodes. Each sensor node has passive acoustic and magnetic sensors, an acoustic modem, and local processing capability. We present analytical expressions and a numerical example for the communication requirements in such a system. We also consider the time correlation between messages from different sensor nodes, and present network simulations using a simple MAC protocol. The results presented in the paper will be of use when designing communication protocols for the network, and may be used as a basis for further statistical analysis or Monte Carlo simulations.