Comparison between direct-sequence and multicarrier spread-spectrum acoustic communications in time-varying channels

Underwater communication experiments have been conducted in the Norwegian Oslofjord. Two modulation schemes are compared in a 7-kHz frequency band on a 14-kHz center frequency. The first scheme is direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), using a 7-chip spreading code to achieve a raw data rate of 1000 bps on a single carrier. The second scheme is multicarrier spread spectrum (MCSS) and accomplishes spreading by using seven subbands. The DSSS receiver equalizes on the chips prior to explicit symbol despreading, whereas MCSS features joint multiband equalization and despreading. Four channels are examined, from nearly static to overspread. In slowly varying channels, MCSS offers the best performance. DSSS has the best tracking potential for rapidly varying channels, where the challenge is to obtain reliable chip decisions before symbol despreading. The tracking potential can be realized to some extent by hypothesis-feedback equalization. It is further shown that adaptive equalizers are capable of code conversion, i.e., the DSSS receiver can demodulate the MCSS waveform, and vice versa. Neither receiver requires knowledge of the spreading code in order to despread the data.     

Covert underwater acoustic communications

Low probability of detection (LPD) communications are conducted at a low received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to deter eavesdroppers to sense the presence of the transmitted signal. Successful detection at intended receiver heavily relies on the processing gain achieved by employing the direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) technique. For scenarios that lack a sufficiently low SNR to maintain LPD, another metric, referred to as low probability of interception (LPI), is of interest to protect the privacy of the transmitted information. If covert communications take place in underwater acoustic (UWA) environments, then additional challenges are present. The time-varying nature of the UWA channel prevents the employment of a long spreading waveform. Furthermore, UWA environments are frequency-selective channels with long memory, which imposes challenges to the design of the spreading waveform. In this paper, a covert UWA communication system that adopts the DSSS technique and a coherent RAKE receiver is investigated. Emphasis is placed on the design of a spreading waveform that not only accounts for the transceiver structure and frequency-selective nature of the UWA channel, but also possesses a superior LPI. The proposed techniques are evaluated using both simulated and SPACE'08 in-water experimental data.     

水声通信技术综述

文章介绍了水声学中的基础研究领域水下声传播影响因素和研究进展,分析了海洋环境因素对水下声传播的影响机理,给出了不同类型海域以及不同季节的水下声传播特征。文章还列举了目前水下声传播研究的热点问题：水下三维声传播和复杂海洋环境下的水下声传播不确定性研究,并阐述了它在目标探测研究中的应用。最后文章着重讨论了水下声传播的重要应用之一——自适应匹配场处理技术。     

Chaotic modulations and performance analysis for digital underwater acoustic communications

Two modulation schemes, M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) and M-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK), are commonly used for coherent and incoherent digital communications, respectively. Despite wide applications in underwater acoustic (UWA) communications, they are not suitable for confidential applications for their well-known generating processes and signal features. In this paper, two corresponding chaotic modulation methods are proposed to improve their security, namely chaotic MPSK (CMPSK) and chaotic MFSK (CMFSK). By application of chaotic sequences into the modulation procedures, they can prevent the unauthorized receivers from extracting information from the intercepted signals even with high SNR. The confidential performance of chaotic modulations is evaluated by a designed automatic modulation classification (AMC) system. Simulation results indicate a success identification rate of more than 90% for the MPSK and MFSK signal at the SNR from −10 dB to 40 dB, but only an identification rate of nearly zero for the CMPSK and CMFSK signal. Therefore, chaotic modulations have lower available probability and can achieve higher confidential performance. Also, an experiment was conducted to verify the performance of chaotic modulations in actual UWA communications. The experimental results show that chaotic modulations can achieve similar bit error ratio (BER) compared with conventional digital modulations, which verifies potential applications of chaotic modulations in confidential UWA communications.     

水声通信系统中双向turbo均衡算法

提出了一种水声通信系统中直接自适应双向turbo均衡算法。摒弃了信道估计步骤,采用基于直接自适应的turbo均衡器,并利用内嵌数字锁相环的判决反馈均衡器结构跟踪时变信道,采用最速优化算法自适应调整迭代步长,使得收敛速度和算法性能得到很好折中。此外,利用最小均方误差准则,得到最优权重因子,对正向与反向turbo均衡结果加权求和,消除误差传播效应。仿真和湖上实验验证了方法的正确性,双向均衡的性能优于单向均衡。湖上实验结果表明,基于直接自适应算法相比于基于信道估计的算法,对时变信道不敏感,能获得更低的误比特率。     

用独立成份分析算法实现水声信号盲分离

独立成份分析算法是在研究信号盲分离过程中出现的一种新方法,本文试图将几种独立成份分析算法用于分离水声信号。分析和比较了5种算法的性能,并用仿真信号对算法进行了仿真,阐述了独立成份分析算法分离水声信号的不足。针对含噪声模型,提出了一种基于独立成份分析算法成功分离水声信号的方法。     

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.     

Asynchronous multiuser underwater acoustic communications (L)

An asynchronous multiuser system is proposed to support multiple-access underwater communications without the use of code-division multiple-access or a feedback channel. The rich multipath channels experienced by spatially separated users will be sufficient to ensure separation of collided packets at the base station. The iterative receiver will employ a combination of adaptive time-reversal processing, matching pursuit, and successive interference cancellation in a block-wise fashion to achieve multiuser separability. Data collected during the KAM11 experiment are used to illustrate the system's capability in a dynamic, time-varying environment.     

Adaptive reception of aggregate frequency signals in an underwater acoustic communications channel under different types of interference

The paper presents the results of experimental research on a multichannel underwater acoustic communications system that increases the digital information rate by aggregate frequency signals under deepsea conditions with multipath signal propagation. Quantitative estimates of information reception quality under various types of interference are given.     

基于单矢量差分能量检测器的扩频水声通信

通过获得扩频处理增益, 直接序列扩频水声通信系统具有较高的稳定性, 是高质量水声通信及远程水声通信的首选通信方式. 但复杂的海洋环境使得直扩系统在解扩时受到载波相位跳变的影响, 这将导致直扩系统的扩频处理增益下降. 为此, 本文针对直扩系统提出了差分能量检测器算法, 通过比较接收端相关器输出能量完成解码, 并与有源平均声强器算法相结合, 提出单矢量差分能量检测器算法. 该算法具有很好的抗载波相位跳变和多途扩展干扰的能力, 并可对信号方位信息实时跟踪估计, 利用估计方位进行矢量组合可获得矢量处理增益, 从而保证直扩系统可以在低信噪比、时变信道条件下稳定工作. 通过仿真分析和大连海试试验, 验证了本文提出的单矢量差分能量检测器算法的有效性和稳健性.     

一种单频水声信号多径时延估计算法

提出一种针对单频水声信号的多径时延估计算法,通过采用频域加权并结合进化规划算法解决代价函数强烈振荡下的高效全局优化。算法引入多径径数建立由多径时延、幅度系数及径数组成的水声信道多径参数模型,在采用频域加权预白化进行非线性最小二乘代价函数解耦处理的基础上,结合进化规划算法进行非线性参数解空间的高效全局寻优,从而实现多径时延的高分辨率估计。利用仿真数据和海上实验数据进行的实验表明,本算法具有较高的多径时延估计精度并可同时实现多径径数的估计。     

Joint passive-phase conjugation with adaptive multichannel combining for coherent underwater acoustic communications

This paper presents a receiver structure which exploits spatial diversity by adaptive multichannel combining, which improves the performance of passive time reversal communications realized by passive-phase conjugation (PPC). PPC processing achieves pulse compression for the time delayed arrivals at the receiver, and this property is used for coherent communications to reduce the computational load. The presented structure takes advantage of pulse compression and performs adaptive multichannel combining, where the number of taps for adaptive multichannel processing is significantly reduced in order to decrease the computational load. With a previous output mean square error (MSE), the adaptive combining minimizes current output MSE, where spatial diversity is exploited by the adaptive combining. This structure improves performance of the passive time reversal approach, even though the taps for combining span one symbol interval. The performance improvement is demonstrated by a set of real data collected in a recent sea experiment, which was conducted in a range dependent acoustic channel over a range of 4 km.     

Multi-array iterative receiver for underwater acoustic OFDM communications with EXIT chart evaluation

In this paper, a multi-array iterative receiver based on log-likelihood ratio (LLR)-combining detection involving joint sparse channel estimation and decoding is proposed for underwater acoustic OFDM communication. First, Extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is applied to evaluate the convergence behavior of the iterative receiver using the real data collected from the Kauai Acomms MURI 2011 (KAM11) experiment. This experiment was conducted in about 106 m-depth shallow water west of Kauai, HI, in June 2011, with a 20 kHz bandwidth (12–32 kHz) at range up to 3 km. It helps to explain the impact of different data configurations, detectors, and the diversity combinations in a highly inhomogeneous underwater environment and to predict the bit-error rate (BER) performance of the proposed receiver. Then the BERs as a function of the number of combined elements are illustrated to verify the prediction and analysis via the EXIT chart. Data transmission using 16QAM modulation achieves a BER of 10⁻⁴ at a data rate of 21 kb/s. The results provide guidance for the design of system parameters including the data configurations, the number of iterations for both iterative processing and low density parity check (LDPC) decoding, which are beneficial to achieve a good efficiency-performance tradeoff.     

Effects of ocean thermocline variability on noncoherent underwater acoustic communications

The performance of acoustic modems in the ocean is strongly affected by the ocean environment. A storm can drive up the ambient noise levels, eliminate a thermocline by wind mixing, and whip up violent waves and thereby break up the acoustic mirror formed by the ocean surface. The combined effects of these and other processes on modem performance are not well understood. The authors have been conducting experiments to study these environmental effects on various modulation schemes. Here the focus is on the role of the thermocline on a widely used modulation scheme (frequency-shift keying). Using data from a recent experiment conducted in 100-m-deep water off the coast of Kauai, HI, frequency-shift-key modulation performance is shown to be strongly affected by diurnal cycles in the thermocline. There is dramatic variation in performance (measured by bit error rates) between receivers in the surface duct and receivers in the thermocline. To interpret the performance variations in a quantitative way, a precise metric is introduced based on a signal-to-interference-noise ratio that encompasses both the ambient noise and intersymbol interference. Further, it will be shown that differences in the fading statistics for receivers in and out of the thermocline explain the differences in modem performance.     

Multipath time delay estimation of underwater acoustic sinusoidal signals

To overcome the performance limitation of multipath time-delay estimation posed by underwater acoustic sinusoidal signals, an approach incorporating the frequency-domain weighting of the highly oscillatory Nonlinear Least Squares （NLS） cost function with the evolu- tionary optimization was proposed to facilitate the accurate estimation of the multipath timedelay of sinusoidal signals. In the described method, the number of the effective multipath signals, which is included into the parameter model as well as the multipath time-delay and amplitude factor, can be estimated simultaneously thus avoiding the requirement of additional computation. The experimental results performed with numerical simulation and sea-trial data are provided, demonstrating the effectiveness and precision enhancement of the proposed algorithm.     

Experimental demonstration of underwater acoustic communication using bionic signals

This paper applies dolphin whistles to covert underwater acoustic (UWA) communication and proposes a UWA communication scheme based on M-ary bionic signal coding. At the transmitter end, the scheme maps multiple information bits into a dolphin whistle through a signal selector. At the receiver end, passive time reversal mirror (PTRM) is used for channel equalization and source information is restored according to the decision of which whistle is transmitted. The scheme has high spread spectrum gain. The anti multi-path performance is greatly improved when using PTRM. Different from traditional covert UWA communication methods, this mimicked signal is unlikely to alert an adversary even in high SNRs because of its real existence in marine environment. A tank experiment is conducted for the scheme, at communication rate of 50 bit/s with SNR −5 dB user information is recovered at a very low bit error rate. The results of tank experiment demonstrate the feasibility of this covert UWA communication scheme.     

Intersymbol interference in underwater acoustic communications using time-reversal signal processing

Coherent underwater communication is hampered by the time spread inherent to acoustic propagation in the ocean. Because time-reversal signal processing produces pulse compression, communications has been suggested as a natural application of the technique. Passive versions of time-reversal processing use a receive-only array to do combined temporal and spatial matched filtering. It can be shown, however, that the pulse compression it achieves is not perfect and that an equalizer that relies solely on time-reversal processing will have an error floor caused by uncompensated intersymbol interference (ISI). In the present paper, a physics-based model is developed for the uncompensated ISI in a passive time-reversal equalizer. The model makes use of a normal-mode expansion for the acoustic field. The matched-filtering integral is approximated and the intermediate result interpreted using the waveguide invariant. After combining across the array and sampling, formal statistical averages of the soft demodulation output are calculated. The results show how performance scales with bandwidth, with the number and position of array elements, and with the length of the finite impulse response matched filters. Good agreement is obtained between the predicted scaling and that observed in field experiments.     

水声工程中基于均匀圆阵列的涡旋声波性能分析*

声波作为信息和能量的载体,一直以来在水下通信中被广泛采用,但尚未解决带宽窄、速率低的问题。在光学领域和电磁波领域,轨道角动量都表征了螺旋相位结构的自然属性;通过引入轨道角动量到声学领域中,水声通信系统的传输能力以及频谱效率都得到扩展。基于换能器圆阵列产生涡旋声波进行分析和检测,研究涡旋声波波束的阵列产生方法,给出涡旋声波波束在水下传播的特性。在主轴方向,采用均匀圆阵列产生不同拓扑模式的涡旋声波波束,确定轨道角动量拓扑模式与换能器阵列之间的对应关系;为生成不同拓扑模式下的涡旋声波,研究阵列单元数目、阵列半径、传输频率等对涡旋声波的影响。通过研究发现模式数越高,涡旋声波主瓣波束角越大,主瓣峰值越小。阵列半径越大,主瓣波束角越大,而主瓣峰值则随着阵列半径的增大而减小;频率越高,主瓣波束角越小,主瓣峰值变化不大;阵列单元数对主瓣波束角无影响,但与主瓣峰值成正比关系,阵列单元数越多,主瓣峰值越大。     

Performance analysis and design of quasi-cyclic LDPC codes for underwater magnetic induction communications

Magnetic induction (MI) communication is an effective scheme for underwater wireless communication. In this paper, we aim to design an underwater MI communication system based on Quasi-cyclic LDPC (QC-LDPC) codes. Firstly, for a given QC-LDPC code used in underwater MI communication, we propose a novel algorithm to evaluate its performance, which is named as underwater magnetic induction protograph (UWMIP) extrinsic information transfer algorithm. Furthermore, we present a differential evolution UWMIP (DE-UWMIP) algorithm, which incorporates the differential evolution method and the UWMIP algorithm. By this algorithm, we search the optimized QC-LDPC codes with best distance threshold. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and provide a good guidance to design the underwater MI communication system.