communication protocol for acoustic ad-hoc networks of autonomous underwater vehicles

This thesis presents the design and implementation of an underwater network communication protocol. The goal is to enable several autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to form a communication network and to exchange information during at-sea missions. The focus of this work is on the upper layers of the protocol: Network and Transport layers. Routing is a critical issue since all the nodes forming the network are moving. A study and comparison of existing routing algorithms is presented. Two routing algorithms have been chosen and implemented in the network layer of the protocol: Flooding and Destination Sequence Distance Vector Routing. The protocol has been tested on several types of simulated missions. An analysis of the results is proposed for each mission.