High-speed Underwater Acoustic Communication Research Articles

Extrinsic information based enhanced Doppler compensation for high-speed underwater acoustic mobile communication

In high-speed underwater acoustic mobile communication, achieving robust Doppler compensation is crucial due to the unpredictable changes in the Doppler factor. Due to the difficulty in optimizing Doppler estimation in turbo equalization through closed-form methods, a joint design of Doppler compensation, channel equalization, and decoding, is proposed to improve the accuracy of the Doppler compensation through integrated methods. Specifically, the proposed scheme utilizes extrinsic information provided by the decoder to evaluate the effectiveness of Doppler compensation because the extrinsic information indirectly reflects the accuracy of Doppler estimation. The proposed algorithm performs parallel Doppler resampling through multiple joint Doppler compensation, equalization, and decoding to optimize Doppler estimation by searching for the best extrinsic information. With iterative Doppler compensation and channel equalization, the accuracy of Doppler estimation is enhanced, leading to improved signal detection performance. The proposed algorithm was verified by underwater test data collected in Qiandao Lake, Hangzhou, China in May 2016. The results of this evaluation provide practical validation and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in real-world underwater acoustic communication scenarios.

Characterization and modeling of high-speed underwater acoustic communication channels

High-speed mobile underwater acoustic communication (HSM-UAC) is a relatively unexplored terrain, but its importance is expected to increase with the widespread application of flexible underwater mobile platforms such as AUVs and UUVs. Knowledge of HSM-UAC channels is a prerequisite to achieving reliable communication. This work conducted two HSM-UAC channel measurement experiments with a maximum speed of 20knots. The analysis of channel time-varying characteristics demonstrates the shortcomings of traditional consistent Doppler frequency offset channel model. The experimental findings reveal the presence of two non-stationary modes in the HSM-UAC channel. For short moving distances, the changes in channel geometry result in each path experiencing a different Doppler scale, thus observing the multiscale-multilag (MSML) channels. For long moving distances, the alteration in sound ray propagation tracks entirely reshapes the channel impulse response (CIR) structure, leading to a rapid decline in channel time correlation. In further analysis, the correlation coefficient of the power delay profile (PDP) is used to measure channel stationarity. Subsequently, the stationary time and corresponding stationary distance are calculated as characterization parameters for the time-varying channel model. The quantitative evaluation results are helpful for the communication signal design and determining the update frequency of channel state information.

Research and Implementation of Turbo Coding Technology in High-Speed Underwater Acoustic OFDM Communication

It is demonstrated that the fully parallel turbo decoding algorithm can achieve an approximate error correction decoding performance when 36 iterations are used and when the log-map algorithm with 6 iterations is used. By comparison, it is shown that it can achieve much higher decoding rates than the log-map algorithm for various frame lengths of LTE standard turbo codes at the cost of higher hardware resource requirements. According to the fully parallel turbo decoding algorithm, this paper proposes a scheme for implementing a fully parallel turbo decoder on FPGA, detailing the overall structure and processing of the decoder hardware implementation, the design of the algorithm block processing unit, and the interleaving module. The performance of the decoder is tested by fixed-point simulation for different frame lengths of turbo coding in LTE standard, and it is proved that the fully parallel turbo decoder can be applied to turbo coding of various frame lengths. Both simulation and experimental results show that the distributed cancellation method and the joint estimation cancellation method have good results for both time-domain impulse noise and large-amplitude single frequency noise cancellation, while the joint estimation cancellation method of large-amplitude single frequency noise cancellation first has better performance.

水中音響通信の高速化に向けた時空間等化技術

水中音響通信の高速化に向けた時空間等化技術

Research and Fabrication of Broadband Ring Flextensional Underwater Transducer.

At present, high-speed underwater acoustic communication requires underwater transducers with the characteristics of low frequency and broadband. The low-frequency transducers also are expected to be low-frequency directional for realization of point-to-point communication. In order to achieve the above targets, this paper proposes a new type of flextensional transducer which is constructed of double mosaic piezoelectric ceramic rings and spherical cap metal shells. The transducer realizes broadband transmission by means of the coupling between radial vibration of the piezoelectric rings and high-order flexural vibration of the spherical cap metal shells. The low-frequency directional transmission of the transducer is realized by using excitation signals with different amplitude and phase on two mosaic piezoelectric rings. The relationship between transmitting voltage response (TVR), resonance frequency and structural parameters of the transducer is analyzed by finite element software COMSOL. The broadband performance of the transducer is also optimized. On this basis, the low-frequency directivity of the transducer is further analyzed and the ratio of the excitation signals of the two piezoelectric rings is obtained. Finally, a prototype of the broadband ring flextensional underwater transducer is fabricated according to the results of simulation. The electroacoustic performance of the transducer is tested in an anechoic water tank. Experimental results show that the maximum TVR of the transducer is 147.2 dB and the operation bandwidth is 1.5–4 kHz, which means that the transducer has good low-frequency, broadband transmission capability. Meanwhile, cardioid directivity is obtained at 1.4 kHz and low-frequency directivity is realized.

A Communication Method between High-speed UUV and Distributed Intelligent Nodes

In this paper, a doppler distortion compensation method for underwater transmission of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) signals is proposed, which is used to realize real-time underwater acoustic communication between high-speed UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) and intelligent nodes. The method decomposes channel variations based on a functions with a set of known equations. OFDM symbol reconstruction is performed after the Taylor(T) FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) process. We design an adaptive stochastic gradient descent algorithm based on MMSE criterion to learn the combiner weights for differentially coherent detection, thereby achieving adaptive channel equalization in the underwater acoustic channel. Comprehensive data and experimental data from the recent mobile acoustic communication delta are used to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The method can realize high-speed underwater acoustic communication, provide data sample basis for long-term big data analysis, and realize real-time communication result analysis.

Channel Estimation and Equalization of Underwater Acoustic MIMO-OFDM Systems: A Review Estimation du canal et l’égalisation des systèmes MEMS-MROF acoustiques sous-marins: une revue

High-speed underwater acoustic (UWA) communication is challenging due to limited bandwidth, extended multipath spread, severe Doppler effect, and large transmission loss. The use of multiple transducers at both transmitter and receiver increases the spatial diversity of the system, and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) solves the problem of limited bandwidth due to its high spectral efficiency. Thus, the combination of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and OFDM shifts the UWA communication to a whole new level; however, at the same time, it also increases the design challenges for the development of such systems. Intersymbol interference, intercarrier interference, and cochannel interference are introduced in the received signal by the extended multipath and Doppler shifts along with different types of noises due to the noisy acoustic channel. Therefore, many channel estimation and equalization schemes are developed for the UWA MIMO-OFDM communication systems. In this paper, these schemes are thoroughly reviewed, summarized, categorized, and compared with other similar algorithms in terms of complexity and performance while pointing out the prevailing research problems.

Exploiting joint sparsity for underwater acoustic MIMO communications

MIMO communication has been recognized as a potential solution for high speed underwater acoustic communication, which unfortunately encounters significant difficulties posed by simultaneous presence of multipath and Co-channel interference (CoI). Sparsity contained in the multipath structure of underwater acoustic channels offers an effective way for improving channel estimation quality and thus enhancing the communication performance in the form of time reversal or channel estimation based equalization. However, for MIMO channels with extensive multipath and CoI, the performance gain achieved by classic sparsity exploitation channel estimation methods such as orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) is still not enough to yield satisfactory performance. Under quasi-stationary assumption, underwater acoustic channels of adjacent data blocks exhibit correlated multipath structure, namely, multipath arrivals with similar time delay but different magnitude, which has not been exploited. In this paper, a joint sparse recovery approach is proposed to exploit the sparse correlation among adjacent data blocks to improve the performance of channel estimation. Under the framework of distributed compressed sensing (DCS), a joint sparse model which treats the multipath arrivals as sparse solutions with common time support is adopted to derive a joint sparse recovery algorithm for efficient channel estimation, the results of which are used to initialize and periodly update a channel estimation based time reversal receiver. Finally, underwater MIMO communication experimental results obtained in a shallow water channel are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, compared to the same type of receiver that do not exploit the joint sparse.

Research on Improvement of Spectrum Efficiency of Spread Spectrum OFDM Communication Scheme for Cruising Sensor Network

Cruising sensor nodes have an attractive application in monitoring liquid-based industrial environments. A cruising sensor node, equipped with various sensors, is self-propelled so that they can “cruise” to specified area to gather scientific data. The cruising sensor network consists of an array of such cruising nodes to perform collaborative monitoring task over a given area. A reliable and high-speed underwater acoustic (UWA) communication scheme is necessary for node-to-node communication. Most of the industrial liquid reservoirs are confined spaces, including large oil tanks and nuclear storage ponds. The communication in confined underwater space will suffer more severe multipath interference caused by numerous reflections from boundaries. Conventional orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) technique has poor performance in this channel. Instead, spread spectrum orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (SS-OFDM), which applies spread spectrum technique into OFDM, has better performance in such severely multipath fading underwater channels. However, the spread spectrum process causes a huge waste in the spectrum efficiency. In order to enhance the transmission efficiency, a mapping sequence spread spectrum OFDM (MSSS-OFDM) method is proposed in this paper. The simulation and experimental results show that our scheme is a robust and spectrum efficient communication method for confined underwater space.

Reliability Analysis of Turbo Code for High-Speed Underwater Acoustic Communication Based on OFDM

With the rapid development of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) technology and its own advantages, this technology has been studied actively in underwater acoustic communication recently to improve the data transfer rate and reliability. This paper introduces the key technology of high speed OFDM underwater acoustic communication, analyzes the advantages and disadvantages, design a high-speed underwater acoustic OFDM communication coding scheme based on TURBO code, and proceeding the simulation and analysis for the OFDM system. Finally, the reliability of TURBO code in high speed underwater acoustic OFDM communication is analyzed.

Study of underwater speech coding technique based on contact conduction transmitter.

Low bit rate speech coding of 2.4 kbps is actualized by mixed excitation linear prediction algorithm, which meets the requirement of high data rate of underwater speech communication system and the limit of high communication rate of underwater acoustic communication technique. In the process of speech coding, a great deal of speech data is compressed to high speed underwater acoustic communication, and the main characteristics of speaker are remained perfectly. Meanwhile, the capability of avoiding interference is improved obviously by the speech based on contact conduction transmitter as input signal. This underwater speech coding technique and differential OFDM technique are combined and experimented under 434, 1310, and 2000 m in the lake. The real-time transmission of speech signal is presented in the condition of complicated multi-path in the extremely shallow sea. The results show the synthesized speech has well quality of intelligibility and clarity, which satisfies the demand of underwater speech coding.

The simulation research on the underwater communication system based on the vector hydrophone.

In this paperC the vector hydrophone is applied to the OFDM underwater acoustic communication system. The directivity of vector hydrophone is used to shield the strong interference. The method has obvious effect on enhancing the anti‐isotropic‐interference, improving SNR, and reducing bit error rate. The result of simulation indicates that the OFDM communication system based on the vector hydrophone is the effective solution scheme for achieving the high speed underwater acoustic communication.

Development of Tilted Toroidal Beam Wideband Transducer Using Quadrature Phase Shift Keying for Underwater Acoustic Communication

To achieve high-speed underwater acoustic communication, a wideband transducer suitable for use in the vicinity of the sea bottom was developed. With the wideband characteristic maintained, the beam can be formed by combining two free-flooded rings. The characteristic of the developed transducer was measured. An excellent characteristic was obtained within an angular range from the horizontal to 30° elevation. Also, an excellent characteristic was obtained within the frequency range from 60 to 100 kHz. Moreover, a communication experiment was carried out using this transducer and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation, and data were obtained near the sea bottom of 1,000 m depth. Transmitted data were demodulated by postprocessing, and it was able to be communicated at the transmission rate of 80 kbps over a transmission distance of 350 m.

Adaptive Array Processing for High-Speed Acoustic Communication in Shallow Water

A novel multichannel signal-processing technique, capable of achieving stable high-speed underwater acoustic communication with a fairly low complexity of implementation, is presented. The approach is to split the space and time processing into two separate suboptimal processes to reduce computational complexity and instabilities associated with large tap vectors at large spread factors or BL products. The first suboptimal process starts with the eigen-spatial decomposition of the acoustic channel into multiple coherent orthogonal paths. Only the most energetic coherent paths are retained. For each selected path, individual synchronization is performed, the mean Doppler shift is estimated, and the message is decoded. The message binary information obtained for each individual path is recombined using maximal-ratio combining (MRC) to generate a decision binary sequence along with an array of quality factors, or metrics, associated with each bit. Each metric corresponds to the signal-to-noise-and-interference ratio (SNIR) associated with each bit. The second suboptimal process is a linear multichannel equalizer (LME). The mean Doppler estimate of the most energetic coherent path is used to resample each input signal of the array that go into the LME, to reduce the rate of fluctuation of the resulting effective channel. These resampled input signals appear as if they have passed through a channel with a lower B (Doppler spread), which allows the final space-time processor (the LME) to operate in a stable manner. The decision binary sequence and the array of quality metrics obtained at the output of the MRC are used as inputs in the decision process of the LME. If the metric associated with a decision bit exceeds a computed threshold, this bit, obtained at the output of the first suboptimal process, is used as a decision input to the LME. This technique is applied to achieve high-speed acoustic communication in very shallow water using coherent modulation techniques. As compared with coherent beamforming alone, the proposed technique causes a significant increase in SNIR, a significant decrease of the bit-error rate, and provides an estimate of the BL product. Experimental results demonstrate that stable acoustic communication can be achieved at 16000 coded bits per second (b/s) over 3.2 km in 40 ft of water and in sea-state 2 conditions. The fading properties of the channel are measured. Experimental results show that the BL product can vary by a decade in 116 ms and by two decades within minutes, from 0.001 to 0.1. The real-time analysis shows a strong correlation between the communication performance, the spread factor, and the spatial coherence of the channel.

Experiments on Acoustic Communication with Quadrature Amplitude Modulation in Multipath Environment

An experiment on high-speed underwater acoustic data communication was carried out at real sea as a time-variant multipath channel. Demodulation was processed by a multichannel decision feedback equalizer (DFE) demodulator with adaptive filtering. The modulation method used was 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM), transmitting rate was 32 k bit per second (bps), carrier frequency was 20 kHz, and bandwidth was 8 kHz (16–24 kHz). Good demodulation results were obtained at a sea trial despite the presence of high-level multipaths. At real sea, we proved that high-speed (32 kbps) acoustic communication can be realized even in a multipath fading channel with 16-QAM. Therefore, it is expected that the flexibility of the design of underwater equipment will be improved, because the influence of a circumferential structure can be neglected.

Recent advances in high-speed underwater acoustic communications

In recent years, underwater acoustic (UWA) communications have received much attention as their applications have begun to shift from military toward commercial. Digital communications through UWA channels differ substantially from those in other media, such as radio channels, due to severe signal degradations caused by multipath propagation and high temporal and spatial variability of the channel conditions. The design of underwater acoustic communication systems has until recently relied on the use of noncoherent modulation techniques. However, to achieve high data rates on the severely band-limited UWA channels, bandwidth-efficient modulation techniques must be considered, together with array processing for exploitation of spatial multipath diversity. The new generation of underwater communication systems, employing phase-coherent modulation techniques, has a potential of achieving at least an order of magnitude increase in data throughput. The emerging communication scenario in which the modern underwater acoustic systems mill operate is that of an underwater network consisting of stationary and mobile nodes. Current research focuses on the development of efficient signal processing algorithms, multiuser communications in the presence of interference, and design of efficient modulation and coding schemes. This paper presents a review of recent results and research problems in high-speed underwater acoustic communications, focusing on the bandwidth-efficient phase-coherent methods. Experimental results are included to illustrate the state-of-the-art coherent detection of digital signals transmitted at 30 and 40 kb/s through a rapidly varying one-mile shallow water channel.

Reduced-complexity spatial and temporal processing of underwater acoustic communication signals

Multichannel processing of high-speed underwater acoustic communication signals requires computationally intensive receiver algorithms. The size of adaptive filters, determined by the extent of ocean multipath, increases with signaling rate and limits system performance through large noise enhancement and increased sensitivity of computationally efficient algorithms to numerical errors. To overcome these limitations, reduction in receiver complexity is achieved by exploiting the relationship between optimal diversity combining and beamforming. Under relatively simple conditions, two adaptive receivers, one based on diversity combining which does not rely on any spatial signal distribution, and the other based on optimal beamforming, are shown to achieve the same performance. The beamforming approach, however, leads to a receiver of lower complexity. Carrying these observations over to a general case of broadband transmission through an unknown channel, a fully adaptive receiver is developed which incorporates a multi-input multi-output, many-to-few combiner, and a reduced-complexity multichannel equalizer. Receiver operations are optimized jointly to ensure minimum mean-squared error performance of data detection. Results of processing experimental shallow water data demonstrate the capability to fully exploit spatial diversity of underwater multipath while keeping the complexity at an acceptable level.