Feasibility study of underwater acoustic communications between buried and bottom‐mounted sensors.

Abstract

This paper presents a feasibility study of underwater communications between buried sensor network nodes. To investigate this problem, two experiments have been conducted, where some or all sensor network nodes are buried in the sediment. The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communications have been chosen to test underwater communications because of its unique strength in handling transmissions over long dispersive channels. It is demonstrated that error‐free performance can be achieved between buried sensor nodes using the proposed OFDM receiver. [Work supported by the Office of Naval Research.]