The efficiency of acoustooptic (AO) interaction in YZ-cut proton exchanged (PE) LiNbO₃ waveguides is theoretically analysed by determining the overlap between the optical and acoustic field distributions. The present analysis takes into account the perturbed SAW field distribution due to the presence of the PE layer on the LiNbO₃ substrate determined by the rigorous layered medium approach. The overlap is found to be significant upto very high acoustic frequencies of the order of 5 GHz, whereas in the earlier analysis by vonHelmolt and Schaffer [6] for diffused waveguides, it was shown that the overlap integral rolls down to nearly zero at this high frequency range.