On the effects of node density and duty cycle on energy efficiency in underwater networks

Energy-efficiency in underwater networks is a key issue that affects all aspects of network design, from hardware to protocols and applications. In this paper we analyze the impact of node density on the energy consumption in transmission, reception and idle-listening, in a network where nodes follow a duty cycle scheme. We consider the energy performance of the network for different scenarios, where a different number of nodes and different values of the duty cycle are taken into account. We simulate different power settings, showing that there exists an effective network density for which the energy consumption is minimized.