Development of a real-time adaptive equalizer for a high-rate underwater acoustic data communications link

The paper describes the development of an adaptive equalizer based on the LMS algorithm through simulation results using real data acquired at Loch Duich, a sea loch on the west coast of Scotland, leading to the development of a hardware-implemented real-time adaptive equalizer. To reduce the demand on the equalizer to cancel long delay multipaths, it is combined with an existing adaptive beamformer. The adaptive beamformer, used on the receiver array, has an angular resolution of less than with the ability to adaptively position nulls at angles corresponding to multipath arrivals. This reduces the required tap-length of the equalizer speeding up processing and convergence properties