Performance of CZT-assisted parallel combinatory multicarrier Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum over shallow underwater acoustic channels

Abstract

A Parallel Combinatory multicarrier Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (PC/MC-FHSS) Underwater Acoustic (UWA) communication system combined with a Chip-z Transform (CZT) method is proposed in this paper. One of the advantages of the PC/MC-FHSS system is its ability to resist fading and random narrowband interference during transmission over the UWA channel. Another benefit is increasing the data rate of the system. Results of computer simulations and pool experiments prove that the proposed CZT-assisted PC/MC-FHSS communication system exhibits greater BER performance and higher data rate than those of the traditional FHSS system and the PC/MC-FHSS system. Outfield experiments carried out in Xiamen Port show that the BER performance of the system is on the order of 10−3, when the data rate is up to 469bps and the distances of the communication systems is 10km.