Exploring Uncertainties of Transmission, Reception Delays for Underwater Acoustic Networks

In this letter, we study delay uncertainties of a real underwater system on sending and receiving acoustic signals. Based on experimental data, the delay is first decomposed into seven components, then the features of each component are studied carefully. According to the analysis, it is exciting to conclude that the temporal pattern of some delay components are predictable to a certain extent, which can be utilized to reduce the delay uncertainties. Finally, the time synchronization is provided as an example to show how the delay uncertainties affect the performance of an underwater application.