Experimental Multipath Delay Profile of Underwater Acoustic Communication Channel in Shallow Water

Abstract

The shallow water channel is an environment that is of particular interest to many research fields. An underwater acoustic channel is characterized as a multipath channel. Time-varying multipath propagation is one of the major factors that limit the acoustic communication performance in shallow water. This study conducts two underwater acoustic experiments in Tanjung Balau, Johor, Malaysia. A transducer and a hydrophone are submerged at different depths and separated by different distances. Linear frequency modulated (LFM) pulses are chosen as the main transmit signal for the experiments. The cross-correlation between the transmitted and received signals represents the impulse response of the channel (multipath profile). The results show that the amplitude of the successive paths will not rapidly decline, and vice versa, when the distance between the sender and the receiver increases. Moreover, the time difference between the different paths will be small in the case of distance increase. In other words, the successive paths will converge in time.