Information-theoretic limits of dense underwater networks

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Shin, Won-Yong, Lucani, Daniel Enrique, Medard, Muriel, Stojanovic, Milica, Tarokh, Vahid
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73694
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4059-407X
Description
Summary: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.