Critical Node Identification of Multi-UUV Formation Based on Network Structure Entropy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I accept the concept and math but there are several things that need addressing. First thing that caught me is some of the language needs attention. 3^rd line in the abstract “...nodes and attacking them.” should be “…nodes to attack them.” 4^th line “with” should be “to have”. 6^th line “…the importance of nodes is determined based on network…” would be better phrased “… the importance of a node is determined using network…” Further down “lake experiments” should just be “experiments”, the lake is a venue you discuss in the text. The venue has no context in the abstract. Last line “…formation, and it can blah blah.” Would e better stated “… formation, and calculate a nodes order of importance.” The first two lines of the introduction are meaningless and should be removed. They do not add anything other than a place to self-reference.  Self-referencing is frowned upon unless you can show that the reference is required for this new work. Neither of these sentences meet that criteria. Also, if you do self-reference it should be limited to one (and only one) previous published paper. This is because those prior papers also reference prior papers. Self-referencing a self-reference is not allowed.

Lots of sentence structure issues in the Introduction. Line 34 – Although the mature technology is increasingly using multi-UUV etc. is a run-on sentence. It needs to broken up and a point made removing superfluous statements that have no point. Line 42 “…can be viewed as a type of…” change ‘type’ to ‘form’ to make a more clear statement. If you use type you should discuss types of coordinated behaviors for comparison. Form is a ‘softer’ way of categorizing coordinated behaviors.

Line 46 to 53 or so… you need to tell how herd intelligence impacts/is involved in this work. Fine to mention it if you’re going to use it but I don’t see it in the paper later.

You have a 3^rd self-reference in the introduction at line76. It reads like it could be OK if you can explain how Liu et al lead into this effort and this effort is building on the prior work. Go through the paper and look for run on sentences (sentences that have more than one idea or condition) and look what you’re saying to be clear, particularly the use of conjunctions.

There are assumptions being made that aren’t explained/justified narrow bandwidth of the acoustic channel. If vehicles are close enough they can communicate with WiFi or other EM waves depending on distance. Lasers can also be used to further communications distances. Acoustically there are other ways to baffle remote sensing and mask and there are systems that hand-off who is lead. Line 136 makes a statement about hierarchical interaction structure but there is no proof or explanation. This needs a diagram or a reference (or both) since it is a given point to start the work you are presenting. In addition there is an assumption, unstated, that you have perfect detection knowledge to proceed with the efforts in your paper.

In the experiment, there are things that aren’t explained… how are the other two followers communicating to the leader and how is your algorithm getting the position in the field? Line 392 says ‘aerial thrust’… there is no air involved so it should just be ‘thrust.’  It looks to me that the vehicles all flew a mission independently setup and the followers actually were not part of a formation, but rather each was programmed to give a mission line to put data into the identification matrices.

Looking further into this entropy as a measure will be very noisy in real word conditions. Multi-vehicle formations will rarely be so tight to give you results as shown in the paper and this work does not include exterior disturbances. This should first be addressed in section 4.2 when discussing the analysis. Your conclusion should state this limitation also in an abbreviated sentence.

Several run on sentences. Many conjunctions used incorrectly leaving a reader to possibly be misled. Spelling is OK. I pointed out a few of the issues in the Comments and Suggestions.

Author Response

Thank you so much for reviewing our paper. We deeply appreciate all of your constructive suggestions and comments. In the document "JMSE_Reply to review1", we have responded to the comments point-by-point. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic addressed in the paper is potentially interesting; however, in the reviewer's opinion, there are some significant comments in the article that the authors should address in detail:

1. Although the dissemination part is well described, the numerical analysis results can be added in the abstract to give more validation of the proposed technique.

2. The novelty of the work in terms of theoretical developments and the motivation needs to be clarified; this issue should be elaborated on in detail at the end of the introduction (Maybe list them in points).

3. Proper spacing has to be given while calling the references in the article.

4.     In Equation 2, mention the usage of lower limit t.

5. Throughout the article, many terms must be properly discussed (For example, δ_i in equation 10).

6. How the impact factor λ is chosen to 0.45? Please justify. Also, varying these values and their results can further helpful to justify the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

7. Replacing the d, T, A, and W matrix empty spaces with zero would be better.

8. Comprehensive strength value and adjacency strength value for the experiment has to be addressed in the results.

Minor changes are needed.

Author Response

Thank you so much for reviewing our paper. We deeply appreciate all of your constructive suggestions and comments. In the document "JMSE_Reply to review2", we have responded to the comments point-by-point. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There are still multiple self references for Liu. The first one explains how this work stems form that work... which is OK. The other references should be removed. Similarly for other authors, show why the one reference matters and remove the multiple references. Also, the authors co-authored other works... it doesn't count to  make a reference per person... one reference total for any given author in a list.

Formatting: The legend in Figure 3 should be larger so the reader can know which line is what. Table 1 should be one page and the Table label should be below it. Lines 359 through 361 are not formatted properly. Also paragraphs have no separation in several places like lines 355 and 356. Figure 5 should be centered. Spacing between 379, 380, 381 and 382 should be inserted. Table labels should be below the tables.

I still believe you need to address that the inputs are for the vehicle test are not representative because they is no sensing, it is pre-programmed. Which is fine to demonstrate your model but it is not a validation by an actual field test, it is a formation that flew as directed and the resulting graphs are not a a representation of an actual detection of a random formation. Be accurate, nothing to be upset about but important for intellectual debate and merit.

The English is improved... there are a few things to be addressed but minor compared to the other things I've expressed to the authors.

Author Response

Thank you for making comments on the manuscript, it will help me a lot. We have a point-by-point response to your comments, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf