Application of Cooperative MIMO in the Ad Hoc Shallow Water Acoustic Sensor Network

A 2-hop cooperative MIMO architecture is presented in the shallow water acoustic sensor network. The general Shannon capacity expression for MIMO communication is modified for this cooperative MIMO environment. The potential of the cooperative MIMO in improving the network performance is studied in terms of the average capacity per node. Conclusions can be drawn that through the cooperative MIMO organization, capacity gains obtained in the multipath rich shallow water acoustic sensor network can be several times of that in the free space environment with the same transmit power constrains. The optimum number of relay nodes for maximum capacity per node mainly depends on the input SNR, the number of sensor nodes, the number of sink element as well as the richness of multipath in the channel.