Experimental demonstration of single carrier underwater acoustic communication using a vector sensor

Abstract

Vector sensors could simultaneously collect not only pressure but also velocity signals and there will be a valuable gain when combining these two kinds of signals properly. This paper studies single carrier underwater acoustic (UWA) communication using a vector sensor. In a recent field experiment, acoustic communication transmissions were carried out over a 1km range in shallow water at Songhua River, Heilongjiang province, China. The same coded signal was transmitted when the vector sensor was deployed to depth of 1m, 1.5m, 2m, and 2.5m respectively. Decoding results, that nearly error-free performance at four depths, show the robustness of UWA communications using a single vector sensor in a highly refractive environment. The four received signals are also combined together to asynchronously realize a vertical array processing using passive time reversal based on the spatial and temporal diversity, achieving a maximum gain about 8.02dB compared with a single sensor processing.