Multipath cluster alignment equalization for single-element high data rate deep-sea acoustic communication

Area of Science:

• Underwater Acoustic Communications
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Deep-sea acoustic channels present challenges due to multipath uncertainties and time variations.
• Single-receiving-element systems require advanced techniques to achieve high data rates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a receiver architecture for high-rate, single-element deep-sea acoustic communication.
• To exploit the clustered sparsity of deep-sea channels for improved performance.

Main Methods:

• Developed a receiver using multipath cluster alignment (MCA) pre-equalization.
• Employed a channel estimation-based turbo equalizer (CE-TEQ) for residual interference suppression.
• Jointly equalized aligned multipath clusters (MCs) to decompose the channel into shorter sub-channels.

Main Results:

• The MCA pre-equalizer creates a shortened, time-variation-suppressed equivalent channel.
• The proposed receiver outperforms traditional methods in simulations and experiments.
• Achieved error-free communication at 5019.6 bps over 20 km with a single element.

Conclusions:

• The MCA technique effectively addresses deep-sea channel complexities.
• The developed receiver architecture significantly enhances communication performance and data rates.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of high-rate, reliable underwater acoustic communication with a single receiving element.