Experimental results on synchronization with chirp signals using a vector sensor receiver

Abstract

Chirp signals, also known as linear frequency modulated signals, are widely used for synchronization, signal acquisition, and frame detection in underwater communication systems. This is due to the peak at the output of the chirp matched filter at the receive side. In low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scenarios, however, this peak can be buried in noise, which results in major synchronization errors and system performance loss. While a scalar array of spatially separated hydrophones can increase SNR to improve synchronization, the size of the array may not be suitable for small platforms. Acoustic vector sensors, on the other hand, are small-size devices that can serve as multichannel communication receivers. In this paper, performance of a vector sensor receiver for synchronization using a chirp signal is studied. Our experimental results indicate that a compact vector sensor receiver can significantly enhance the output of the filter matched to the chirp signal. This is because the proposed vector matched filter significantly suppresses the noise and provides a sharp peak at the output. This is particularly important for synchronization and signal acquisition in underwater communication systems operating in low SNR environments. [This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Grant IIP-1500123.]

A Novel Underwater Acoustic Signal Denoising Algorithm for Gaussian/Non-Gaussian Impulsive Noise

“…the SOI in this paper, and the underwater acoustic noise is obtained by combining the AWGN with the non-Gaussian impulsive noise shown in Eqs. (2) and (8), respectively. The performance of the proposed underwater acoustic signal denoising algorithm based on AWMF+GDES is presented and compared with different algorithms obtained by combining AWMF, with Semi-soft, MSSA, MPSO, and ECABC.…”