Application of Vector Sensor for Underwater Acoustic Communications

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the capacity of underwater acoustic communication systems using vector sensors, providing analytical bounds and simulation comparisons to enhance understanding of their performance across different locations.

Contribution

It extends a recent channel capacity framework to derive bounds for vector sensor-based underwater communication systems, incorporating realistic channel modeling with Bellhop simulations.

Findings

Analytical capacity bounds closely match simulation results.

Channel capacity varies with geographical location and time.

Vector sensors offer diversity gains similar to MIMO systems.

Abstract

The use of vector sensors as receivers for Underwater Acoustic Communications systems is gaining popularity. It has become important to obtain performance measures for such communication systems to quantify their efficacy. The fundamental advantage of using a vector sensor as a receiver is that a single sensor is able to provide diversity gains offered by MIMO systems. In a recent work novel framework for evaluating capacity of underwater channel was proposed. The approach is based on modeling the channel as a set of paths along which the signal arrives at the receiver with different Angles of Arrival. In this work, we build on that framework to provide a bound on the achievable capacity of such a system. The analytical bounds have been compared against simulation results for a vector sensor based SIMO underwater communications system. The channel parameters are modeled by analysing the statistics generated with Bellhop simulation tool. This representation of the channel is flexible and allows for characterizing channels at differenet geographical locations and at different time instances. This characterization in terms of channel parameters enables the computing of the performance measure (channel capacity bound) for different geographical locations