Watermark: A realistic benchmark for underwater acoustic modems

Watermark is a benchmark for testing, development, and comparison of physical-layer schemes for underwater acoustic communications. Its core is a replay channel simulator driven by at-sea measurements of the time-varying impulse response. Watermark is programmed in MATLAB and is initially provided with two (single-receiver) test channels with a run time of 30 minutes each. These channels were measured in Norwegian waters in the frequency band from 10 to 18 kHz. The benchmark can be extended with channels from different environments and frequency bands, depending on the willingness of third parties to perform and make available such measurements.