Effects of Channel Estimation Errors in OFDM-MIMO-Based Underwater Communications

State-of-the-art radio communication systems are in a large extent based on multi-carrier communication (OFDM) and multiple antennas (MIMO). In this paper the performance of such systems adapted to an underwater acoustic communication channel is assessed. The effect of the channel characteristics on an OFDM-MIMO scheme similar to that used in WiMAX (IEEE802.16e) is analyzed, in particular related to channel estimation error. Simulation results illustrate the relation between estimation error and BER performance for single antenna systems (SISO) and when a MIMO technique is applied.