• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.199-203
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• 2017

In this paper, we developed an underwater localization system for underwater robot docking using the electromagnetic wave attenuation model. Electromagnetic waves are generally known to be impossible to use in water environment. However, according to the conclusions of the previous studies on the attenuation characteristics in underwater, the attenuation pattern is uniform and its model was accurately proposed and verified in 3-dimensional space via the omnidirectional antenna. In this paper, a docking structure and localization sensor system are developed for a widely used cone type docking mechanism. First, we fabricated electromagnetic wave range sensor transmit modules. And a mobile sensor node is equipped with unmanned underwater vehicle(UUV)s. The mobile node senses the four different signal strength (RSS: Received Signal Strength) from fixed nodes, and the obtained RSS data are transformed to each distance information using the 3-Dimensional EM wave attenuation model. Then, the relative localization between the docking area and underwater robot can be achieved according to optimization algorithm. Finally, experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed localization system for the docking induction by comparing the errors in the actual position of the mobile node and the theoretical position through the model.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.76-89
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose a MAC(Media Access Control) protocol based on flexible RWT(RTS Waiting Time) for underwater mobile ad-hoc networks with a three-way handshaking mechanism. This protocol can solve a problem of collision between RTS(Request-To-Send) and CTS(Clear-To-Send) packets in existing MACA(Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) protocol. This proposed MAC protocol is also an effective protocol which can apply to underwater mobile ad-hoc networks in a real field by using implementable technologies. We set flexible RTS Waiting Time called RWT, considering various characteristics of underwater environment. It is possible to support variable network size according to node mobility. Finally, we conduct a performance evaluation between proposed MAC protocol and existing MACA based MAC protocol through practical implementation and experiment. As a result, we verify the superiority of our proposed MAC protocol in terms of throughput, packet drop rate, average transmission time, energy consumption and channel utilization.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.2088-2096
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• 2009

This paper deals with hybrid MAC protocol design for underwater acoustic networks. The proposed MAC protocol has the cluster structure with a master node and slave nodes, and the hybrid network structure that combines a contention free period based on TDMA(Time Division Multiple Access) with a contention period. The suggested MAC protocol has a beacon packet for supervising network, a guard period between time slots for packet collision, time tag for estimation of propagation delay with a master node, the time synchronization of nodes, entering and leaving of network, and the communication method among nodes. In this paper, we adapt the proposed hybrid MAC protocol to AUV network, that is the representative mobile device of underwater acoustic network, and verify this protocol is applicable in real underwater acoustic network environment.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.156-162
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• 2016

For the underwater localization, acoustic sensor systems are widely used due to greater penetration properties of acoustic signals in underwater environments. On the other hand, the good penetration property causes multipath and interference effects in structured environment too. To overcome this demerit, a localization method using the attenuation of electro-magnetic(EM) waves was proposed in several literatures, in which distance estimation and 2D-localization experiments show remarkable results. However, in 3D-localization application, the estimation difficulties increase due to the nonuniform (doughnut like) radiation pattern of an omni-directional antenna related to the depth direction. For solving this problem, we added a depth sensor for improving underwater 3D-localization with the EM wave method. A micro scale pressure sensor is located in the mobile node antenna, and the depth data from the pressure sensor is calibrated by the curve fitting algorithm. We adapted the depth(z) data to 3D EM wave pattern model for the error reduction of the localization. Finally, some experiments were executed for 3D localization with the fast calculation and less errors.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.50-60
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• 2015

A Block-Time-Bounded Time Division Multiple Access (BTB-TDMA) medium access control protocol, which estimates the propagation delay of nodes according to their location and moving velocity information, has been proposed for underwater acoustic networks. BTB-TDMA provides nodes with their transmission schedules by a time block that is a time unit, newly designed for BTB-TDMA. In this paper, we investigate how the receiver collision, that is induced by the asymmetry between node's uplink and downlink propagation delay due to its mobility, affects the performance of BTB-TDMA. To do this, we analytically obtain the collision rate, the channel access delay, and the channel utilization by considering the asymmetry of propagation delay. Then, simulations are extensively performed with respect to the length of a time block by varying the number of nodes, the network range, and the node's velocity. Thus, the simulation results can suggest performance criteria to determine the optimal length of a time block which minimizes the collision rate and concurrently maximizes the channel access delay and the channel utilization.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.53-66
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• 2010

The energy efficiency is a key design issue to improve the lifetime of the underwater sensor networks (UWSN) consisting of sensor nodes equipped with a small battery of limited energy resource. In this paper, we apply a hexagon tessellation with an ideal cell size to deploy the underwater sensor nodes for two-dimensional UWSN. Upon this setting, we propose an enhanced hybrid transmission method that forwards data packets in a mixed transmission way based on location dependent direct transmitting or uniform multi-hop forwarding. In order to select direct transmitting or uniform multi-hop forwarding, the proposed method applies the threshold annulus that is defined as the distance between the cluster head node and the base station (BS). Our simulation results show that the proposed method enhances the energy efficiency compared with the existing multi-hop forwarding methods and hybrid transmission methods