Time reversal acoustic communication with concatenated reed-solomon code

This paper presents a scheme combing time reversal processing with concatenated Reed-Solomon channel coding for underwater acoustic communication. Time reversal processing is demonstrated as a means of refocusing signal that has been spread in time, which significantly mitigates the inter-symbol interferences inherent in multipath ocean environments. Reed-Solomon code performs well against burst errors caused by channel fading and burst noise that may occur during the course of communication. Using concatenated coding technique instead of a single coding can lower the coding complexity. The results of numerical simulation and field experiments show the proposed scheme can improve the quality of communication markedly in a complex underwater acoustic channel.