Underwater acoustic channel characteristics and communication performance at 85 kHz.

ABSTRACT

A high frequency acoustic experiment was conducted in the northern portion of the Gulf of Mexico in August 2016 to examine the operating range, data rates, and performance of acoustic communication systems at the carrier frequency of 85 kHz. The received signal-to-noise ratios, channel coherence, and impulse responses were reported between two 85 kHz transducers and a five-element hydrophone array over multiple ranges up to 1500 m. Channel estimation based decision feedback equalizers (DFEs) were applied to process the communication measurements. A data rate of 27.2 kb/s was achieved for four tested ranges with a uniform set of receiver parameters.