Digital Underwater Acoustic Communications

Book excerpt: Digital Underwater Acoustic Communications focuses on describing the differences between underwater acoustic communication channels and radio channels, discusses loss of transmitted sound in underwater acoustic channels, describes digital underwater acoustic communication signal processing, and provides a comprehensive reference to digital underwater acoustic communication equipment. This book is designed to serve as a reference for postgraduate students and practicing engineers involved in the design and analysis of underwater acoustic communications systems as well as for engineers involved in underwater acoustic engineering. - Introduces the basics of underwater acoustics, along with the advanced functionalities needed to achieve reliable communications in underwater environment - Identifies challenges in underwater acoustic channels relative to radio channels, underwater acoustic propagation, and solutions - Shows how multi-path structures can be thought of as time diversity signals - Presents a new, robust signal processing system, and an advanced FH-SS system for multimedia underwater acoustic communications with moderate communication ranges (above 20km) and rates (above 600bps) - Describes the APNFM system for underwater acoustic communication equipment (including both civil and military applications), to be employed in active sonar to improve its performance