Information-theoretic limits of dense underwater networks

• Main Authors: Shin, Won-Yong (Author), Lucani, Daniel Enrique (Contributor), Medard, Muriel (Contributor), Stojanovic, Milica (Author), Tarokh, Vahid (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2012-10-10T14:32:12Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Information-theoretic throughput scaling laws are analyzed in an underwater acoustic network with n regularly located nodes on a unit square, in which both bandwidth and received signal power can be severely limited. A narrow-band model is assumed where the carrier frequency is allowed to scale as a function of n. We first characterize an attenuation parameter that depends on the frequency scaling as well as the transmission distance. In the dense network having unit area, a cut-set upper bound on the capacity scaling is then derived. We show that there exists either a bandwidth or a power limitation, or both, according to the path-loss attenuation regimes, thus yielding the upper bound that has three fundamentally different operating regimes. In the dense network, we also describe an achievable scheme based on the simple nearest-neighbor multi-hop transmission. The operating regimes that guarantee the order optimality are identified, where frequency scaling is instrumental towards achieving the order optimality in the regimes.