Recent advances in high-speed underwater acoustic communications

In recent years, underwater acoustic (UWA) communications have received much attention as their applications have begun to shift from military toward commercial. Digital communications through UWA channels differ substantially from those in other media, such as radio channels, due to severe signal degradations caused by multipath propagation and high temporal and spatial variability of the channel conditions. The design of underwater acoustic communication systems has until recently relied on the use of noncoherent modulation techniques. However, to achieve high data rates on the severely band-limited UWA channels, bandwidth-efficient modulation techniques must be considered, together with array processing for exploitation of spatial multipath diversity. The new generation of underwater communication systems, employing phase-coherent modulation techniques, has a potential of achieving at least an order of magnitude increase in data throughput. The emerging communication scenario in which the modern underwater acoustic systems mill operate is that of an underwater network consisting of stationary and mobile nodes. Current research focuses on the development of efficient signal processing algorithms, multiuser communications in the presence of interference, and design of efficient modulation and coding schemes. This paper presents a review of recent results and research problems in high-speed underwater acoustic communications, focusing on the bandwidth-efficient phase-coherent methods. Experimental results are included to illustrate the state-of-the-art coherent detection of digital signals transmitted at 30 and 40 kb/s through a rapidly varying one-mile shallow water channel.