Modeling Acoustic Channel Variability in Underwater Network Simulators from Real Field Experiment Data

The underwater acoustic channel is remarkably dependent on the considered scenario and environmental conditions. In fact, impairments differ significantly in shallow water with respect to deep water, presence of external factors such as snapping shrimps, bubbles, rain, or ships passing nearby, changes temperature, wind strength can change drastically link quality different seasons even during same day. Legacy mathematical models that consider these exist, but are either not very accurate, like Urick model, computationally demanding, Bellhop ray tracer. Deterministic based lookup tables (LUTs) sea trial measurements widely used by research community simulate order verify functionalities a network certain conditions before actual deployment. These LUTs characterize observing, for instance, average packet error rate time varying computed within window. While this procedure characterizes well channel, obtained simulation results limited single realization, making it hard fully evaluate paper, we discuss development statistical model analysis real field experiment data, compare its performance other available DESERT Underwater simulator.