Advancing Underwater Acoustic Communication for Autonomous Distributed Networks via Sparse Channel Sensing, Coding, and Navigation Support

Abstract

The long-term goal is to significantly advance underwater acoustic communication technologies for autonomous distributed underwater networks, through innovative signal processing, coding, and navigation algorithms. Providing highly reliable and high data rate communication links will be critical towards the development of a new era of underwater distributed networks. We have three objectives in this project. 1. Advanced communication techniques of sparse channel sensing and nonbinary LDPC coding. Underwater acoustic channels are naturally sparse, but how to effectively exploit the sparsity is a challenging task. We will investigate the recently developed compressive sensing algorithms for sparse channel estimation in the context of multicarrier acoustic communications. On the other hand, channel coding is one integral part of an advanced communication system, and is dispensable in approaching the theoretical limit predicted by the Shannon theory. We will thoroughly investigate nonbinary low-density-parity-check (LDPC) codes, and especially pursue fast encoding and decoding algorithms and practical implementations. 2. High-resolution ranging and navigation. Wideband multicarrier waveform has a dual use that it can yield precise timing information for the receiver to infer the distance from the sender. With range estimates from multiple buoys, each underwater vehicle can self localize and navigate. We will investigate ranging and tracking algorithms that achieve high positioning accuracy. We aim to integrate the communication and navigation capabilities into the OFDM modem under development, which will greatly facilitate the development of emerging underwater distributed networks. 3. Testbed development and medium access control. We plan to develop a network testbed to illustrate the cooperative networking scenario.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 30, 2012
Accession Number
ADA575144

Entities

People

  • Shengli Zhou

Organizations

  • University of Connecticut

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Communications
  • Coding
  • Communication Systems
  • Decoding
  • Detectors
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Frequency Division Multiplexing
  • Frequency Domain
  • Inter-Carrier Interference
  • Multiplexing
  • Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
  • Sensor Networks
  • Signal Processing
  • Underwater Acoustic Communications
  • Underwater Communications
  • Wireless Communications
  • Wireless Networks

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Marine Mammal Biology
  • Radio communications and signal processing.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML