Clustered Underwater Ad-Hoc Networks in the Presence of Interference

The paper considers the performance of clustered underwater acoustic ad-hoc networks in the presence of interference. We assume a uniform distribution of nodes over a finite area. The cluster-to-cluster channel is modeled as a Ricean fading channel. We adopt a communication theoretic approach and study the interdependence of the sustainable number of cluster-to-cluster hops through the network, end-to-end frame error probability, power and bandwidth allocation. We find that the network's ability to provide full connectivity may be limited from below by coverage and from above by interference. The network may be coverage-limited when the number of nodes in the network is small, and interference-limited when the number of nodes is high. Numerical examples are presented that illustrate the results of the analysis.