Long-Range Underwater Acoustic Navigation and Communication System

The paper presents a performance analysis of a digital underwater acoustic communication system for operating distances above 300 km in 300-500 Hz bandwidth. Estimating the system's performance relies on the underwater acoustic channel model involving a rapid transition from shelf zone to deep-sea consisting of ray patterns and channel impulse responses. Reverberation in such conditions of 200-600 ms imposes specific design requirements to an efficient digital system of commands and data transmission in such a narrow band. The bitrate of 20 bit/s was achieved for stated distances under severe multipathing.