02196nas a2200265   4500000000100000008004100001260003800042653002900080653002600109653002600135100001900161700001800180700001700198700001700215700001800232700002500250700002200275700001700297245005100314856005100365300001200416490000900428520147100437020002201908       2015                            d  bSpringer International Publishing10aAcoustic sensor networks10aCollaborative systems10aOpportunistic routing1 aRodrigo Santos1 aJavier Orozco1 aSergio Ochoa1 aRoc Meseguer1 aGabriel Eggly1 aJuan García-Chamizo1 aGiancarlo Fortino1 aSergio Ochoa00aA MAC Protocol for Underwater Sensors Networks  uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26401-1_37  a394-4060 v94543 aUnderwater sensor networks are becoming an important field of research, because of its everyday increasing application scope. Examples of their application areas are environmental and pollution monitoring (mainly oil spills), oceanographic data collection, support for submarine geo-localization, ocean sampling and early tsunamis alert. It is well-known the challenge that represents to perform underwater communications provided that radio signals are useless in this medium and a wired solution is too expensive. Therefore, the sensors in these network transmit their information using acoustic signals that propagate well under water. This data transmission type bring an opportunity, but also several challenges to the implementation of these networks, e.g., in terms of energy consumption, data transmission and signal interference. Few proposals are available to deal with the problem in this particular application scenario, and these proposals does not address properly the transmission of underwater acoustic signals. In order to help advance the knowledge in the design and implementation of these networks, this paper proposes a MAC protocol for acoustic communications between the nodes based on a self-organized time division multiple access mechanism. The proposal is still preliminary and it has only been evaluated in the laboratory; however, it represents a highly promising behavior that make us expect interesting results in real-world scenarios.  a978-3-319-26400-4