Leveraging spatial diversity to mitigate interference in underwater acoustic communication networks

Abstract

Many acoustic channels suffer from interference which is neither narrowband nor impulsive. This relatively long duration partial band interference can be particularly detrimental to system performance. We survey recent work in interference mitigation and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as background motivation to develop a spatial diversity receiver for use in underwater networks. The network consists of multiple distributed cabled hydrophones that receive data transmitted over a time-varying multipath channel in the presence of partial band interference produced by interfering active sonar signals as well as marine mammal vocalizations. In operational networks, many dropped messages are lost due to partial band interference which corrupts different portions of the received signal depending on the relative position of the interferers, information source and receivers due to the slow speed of propagation.