Multicarrier Underwater Acoustic Communication - A Survey

Abstract

Underwater communication has captured tremendous attention in the last few years. The varied applications ranging over commercial, scientific and military activities require efficient communication under water. Acoustic waves stand out as the best medium for communicating underwater. But underwater communication has to encounter effects of spreading loss, path loss, ambient noise, multipath propagation, Doppler effects etc. In this juncture, identifying suitable underwater acoustic channel model (UAC) is very important for minimum BER communication through underwater by considering water depth, frequency and range. Also the typical long delay spread and the resulting intersymbol interference inherent in underwater acoustic channels has to be dealt with. Multicarrier modulation is a solution to this problem. In this paper an analysis on the existing works related to underwater acoustic communication covering the channel modeling techniques and modulation schemes are presented and the best technique is proposed.