On the dependence of cooperative algorithms on underwater communication performance

Any cooperative mission necessarily involves communication among multiple agents. When the cooperating agents/sensors are used in the underwater domain, communication issues become of paramount importance (e.g. the agent spatial locations and mutual separation has a direct influence on the capability to communicate). This contribution analyses the variation in performance of an adaptive cooperative algorithm for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) with respect to two different communication modalities. The first case is based on the use of an underwater acoustic network which is able to route the information towards the desired recipients; the second case uses a simpler scheme where each agent uses its onboard acoustic modem for broadcast transmission (i.e. all the agents that are able to directly listen the messages receive the information). The simulation testbed is based on the underwater acoustic network library AUVNetSim, adapted to simulate cooperative autonomous agents and broadcast transmission at physical layer.