In-band full-duplex communications for underwater acoustic networks

Driven by the increasing demand on marine exploration, UWANs are confronted with the rigorous challenge of improving network throughput. To deal with this challenge, this article proposes to apply the IBFD technique to UWANs. The IBFD technique can potentially double link capacity by simultaneously transmitting and receiving on the same frequency band, which has been recently demonstrated to be feasible for wireless communications. In this article, novel MAC protocols are specifically proposed for the acoustic IBFD network to overcome the inherent issues in underwater acoustic communications, such as long packet delay, large node collision probability, and high power consumption. Numerical results verify that our proposals can effectively mitigate these effects and improve the overall performance of the UWANs.