Point-to-point underwater acoustic communications using spread-spectrum passive phase conjugation

Abstract

The ocean is often a complex multipath channel and progress has been made in developing equalization algorithms to overcome this. Unfortunately, many of these algorithms are computationally demanding and not as power-efficient as one would like; in many applications it may be better to trade bit rate for longer operational life. In 2000 the U.S. Navy was developing an underwater wireless acoustic network called Seaweb, for which a number of modulation schemes were being tested in a series of SignalEx experiments. This paper discusses two modulation schemes and associated receiver algorithms that were developed and tested for Seaweb applications. These receiver designs take advantage of time reversal (phase conjugation) and properties of spread spectrum sequences known as Gold sequences. Furthermore, they are much less complex than receivers using adaptive equalizers. This paper will present results of testing these signaling and receiver concepts during two experiments at sea.