Optimal Transmission Scheduling in Small Multimodal Underwater Networks

We describe a scheduling protocol for multimodal networks of relatively limited size, whose nodes encompass various underwater communication technologies. For such a case, we show that significant improvement in the network operations is possible when the transmission schedule is set to jointly utilize all communication technologies. Our solution is based on pertechnology time-division multiple access frames, whose time slots are determined optimally to maximize the overall channel utilization while preserving flow limitations and maintaining fairness in resource allocation. Our numerical simulations and experimental results for multimodal networks with several acoustic technologies show that, while maintaining a fair resource allocation, our scheduling solution provides both high throughput and low packet delivery delay.