Efficient Use of Space-Time Clustering for Underwater Acoustic Communications

Underwater acoustical communication channels are characterized by the spreading of received signals in space (direction of arrival) and in time (delay). The spread is often limited to a small number of space-time clusters. In this paper, the space-time clustering is exploited in a proposed receiver designed for guard-free orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing with superimposed data and pilot signals. For separation of space clusters, the receiver utilizes a vertical linear array (VLA) of hydrophones, whereas for combining delay-spread signals within a space cluster, a time-domain equalizer is used. We compare a number of space-time processing techniques, including a proposed reduced-complexity spatial filter, and show that techniques exploiting the space-time clustering demonstrate an improved detection performance. The comparison is done using signals transmitted by a moving transducer, and recorded on a 14-element nonuniform VLA in sea trials at distances of 46 and 105 km.