In terrestrial wireless networks, station (STA) adopts virtual carrier sensing mechanism to avoid hidden terminal problem. The neighbors which had received RTS/CTS will set a Network Allocation Vector (NAV) and suspend the transmission in NAV duration to avoid data collision. Due to the impacts of low data rate and long propagation delay, setting NAV duration in the underwater acoustic networks (UANs) is much difficult than that in the terrestrial wireless networks. A too short NAV duration such that the transmission data to be collided. A too long NAV duration leads the low bandwidth utilization such that low network throughput. In this paper, a stair-like NAV duration setting mechanism is proposed to set a precisely NAV duration on each STA. The proposed stair-like NAV duration setting can overcome the long propagation delay in UANs and minimize the suspended transmission time. Therefore, the stair-like NAV setting mechanism can enhance the network through and avoid the data to be collided.
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