Vector transducer based MISO communications system: Capacity analysis

Vector sensor has had a very positive impact on the performance of underwater acoustic communication systems. Feasibility of using vector sensor for designing and underwater communication system has been recently demonstrated. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture for single vector transducer based multiple input multiple output underwater communications system. We exploit the ability of a single vector sensor transducer to provide spatial diversity. The proposed architecture shows that this diversity can be exploited to design a transmitter with directional transmission which results in better performance due to resulting spatial diversity. We show that an apt transmitter geometry for shallow water communication is a pair of co-located dipoles with a small angular separation. We compute the ergodic capacity of such a system and show that the capacity is higher than that architecture with a scalar sensor transmitter based underwater acoustic communication system.