Time reversal communication using vertical particle velocity and pressure signals in shallow water

Abstract

Acoustic communication in shallow water is characterized by multipath channels, which cause significant delay spreading, leading to inter-symbol interference. This inter-symbol interference necessarily causes a significant degradation in communication performance. Although a time reversal technique has been reported to produce satisfactory performance in multipath dominant environments, this technique requires a large receiver array covering the water column to achieve reliable communication performance. In this paper, a time reversal single-input multiple-output system using the pressure signal and the vertical component of the particle velocity is presented. The vertical component of the particle velocity was estimated using the finite difference in gradient between pressures measured by two vertically adjacent receivers. The experiment was conducted in shallow water off the south coast of Korea, where the water depth is 59 m and the bottom consists of silty clay. The results showed that the time reversal communication system based on vector quantities performed better than systems where only the pressure signals were used.