On the Performances of a Target Detection Algorithm in Underwater Sensor Networks with Aqua-Sim

This paper is aimed at investigating the performance of a behavior-based controller for area coverage and target detection missions, in which multiple Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are employed. The main contribution of this work is the analysis of the performance improvement when a realistic underwater communication network is considered among robots, exploited in a realistic mission. In our model, we integrate the algorithm proposed in and implemented in MATLAB with the Aqua-Sim simulator, a network simulator for underwater sensor network based on NS-2. Results show that the performance improvement is deeply related to the communication parameters, which have to be rightly chosen in order to find a good trade-off between energy consumption and algorithm efficiency.