BER of FRFT-based OFDM system for underwater wireless communication

A key research area in wireless transmission is underwater communication. It has a vital role in applications like underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), disaster detection and surveillance. The underwater channel is considered as one of the most challenging communication channels due to the inherent unique characteristics of the medium. Acoustic signals are the current best candidates for underwater communication. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) facilitates high data rate transmission over long underwater acoustic (UWA) channels. The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the BER performance of fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) based OFDM in a frequency selective Rician fading UWA channel in the presence of CFO. We also propose a novel 16 QAM FRFT-based OFDM to be used in the same channel conditions. The simulation results show that the BER performance of FRFT-OFDM system outperforms than that of the FFT-OFDM system at different values of FRFT angle parameter ‘α’. The plots also indicate that our proposed 16 QAM scheme can support high data rates and still can provide good BER performance.