Simulation and modeling of hydro acoustic communication channels with wide band attenuation and ambient noise

Abstract

Acoustic waves are the preferred medium for long-range underwater communications. Increasing number of innovative methods for underwater communication using acoustic waves appears. Performance of underwater communications for the new methods needs to be evaluated through simulation. Simulation of underwater acoustic communications is challenging due to many impediments, including attenuation, multipath propagation, noise and Doppler spread. In this paper, a baseline time domain simulation model is extended to several frequency-domain models. The proposed frequency models, including two incoherent models and a coherent model, take multipath attenuation and ambient noise into account. An incoherent linear fitting model and a coherent model are simulated and compared with a theoretical reference and the baseline time model. The proposed incoherent models are also compared with one another. Simulation shows that the incoherent linear fitting model produces results similar to the multi-frequency-merge-path model, but requires less computation time. In addition, the proposed coherent model is compared with field experimental data. The coherent model with color noise, in the frequency domain, can match closely the bit error rates of the field experimental data.