A cooperative ARQ-based MAC protocol for underwater wireless sensor networks

In this paper, a handshaking-based MAC protocol that employs a cooperative ARQ is proposed for the underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs). During a handshaking, the source node identifies the neighbors that are qualified for cooperative communication and then inform the destination node of the existence of cooperators. In case that an erroneous data packet is received, the destination makes a request for retransmission of the erroneous packet from the cooperators first, not from the source. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has higher data throughput than the existing MACAU-ACK protocol.