A Hybrid ARQ scheme combining erasure codes and selective retransmissions for reliable data transfer in underwater acoustic sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate a hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme for reliable data transfer in multi-hop underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASNs). The proposed scheme combines Reed-Solomon-based packet level erasure coding and selective retransmissions to achieve high reliability and energy efficiency. We also describe how to select the code rate (i.e., number of encoded packets) for a given message block consisting of m packets. The paper evaluates the performance of the proposed scheme by taking into account the underwater-specific characteristics such as distance dependent bandwidth, acoustic spreading effects, propagation loss, and fading effects. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the network throughput and energy efficiency while reducing the end to end delay considerably.