Throughput of underwater acoustic networks with significant multipath delays

All existing works regarding the throughput of underwater acoustic networks (UWANs) explicitly ignore multipath effect of underwater acoustic channels (UWACs), which, however, is a prominent feature in underwater environments. In this paper, we investigate the throughput of UWANs with significant multipath delays. We extend the popular delay matrix model to make it suitable for analysis of throughput in UWANs with multipath delays. We differentiate between two cases of successful transmissions corresponding to different channel models. With the extended model, we derive the upper bounds of throughput for UWANs under different channel models with various fair constraints. We also show the necessary conditions for achieving these upper bounds under different scenarios. In addition, with derived upper bounds and necessary conditions, we offer designing rules for optimal schedules in UWANs with different channel models. Some examples of optimal schedules which could achieve the upper bounds under different scenarios are also provided.