Under-ice CDMA multiuser acoustic communications

More and more scientific investigations and research activities have been carried out in arctic region, among which the related research on the Arctic Ocean is particularly important. It can be seen that arctic hydro acoustics is the significant support to guarantee military presence and normal scientific research activities. Under-ice acoustic communication experimental was done in Songhua River, Harbin, China in January 2015. Minus 20~30 degrees work environment brings a great challenge to the under-ice experimental campaign. All of the under-ice acoustic communication tests achieve low bit error rate communication at 1km range with different received depth because of the relatively stable under-ice channel. It is found that the closer to the ice the simpler the under-ice acoustic (UIA) channel structure is. Time reversal mirror (TRM) can use the physical characteristics of the UIA channel to focus toward the desired user in multi-user UIA communication. Active average sound intensity (AASI) detector can estimate all azimuths of users with the same frequency band at the same time in order to achieve directional communication by vector combination. Space-division multiple-access (SDMA) based on TRM and AASI detector is used in code-division multiple-access (CDMA) UIA communication to increase the capacity of multiuser system. A method developed for direct sequence spread spectrum communications in an underwater channel are used to extract the transmitted symbols. Under-ice data shows that as many as 12 users can be supported simultaneously in CDMA system combined with SDMA technology.