Design of an Acoustic Communication System Based on FHMA for Multiple Underwater Vehicles

Zixin Zhao, Shuxiang Guo

.

DOI: 10.4236/wet.2010.11005                

Abstract

This paper designs an underwater acoustic communication system based on tamed spread spectrum and Frequency Hopping Multiple Access (FHMA) for multiple underwater vehicles. In this system, multiple underwater vehicles can communicate with the console on the water surface simultaneously successfully. The communication system is com-posed of tamed spread spectrum modulation and demodulation, frequency hopping modulation and demodulation with synchronization function, 4FSK modulation and demodulation and Rake Receiver. In order to make the system more feasible, underwater channel and the effect of user number on Bit Error Ratio (BER) are also taken into account. The simulation results indicate that it is feasible to use this system to accomplish underwater communication reliably for multiple users due to the low BER.

Keywords

Underwater Acoustic Communication, Tamed Spread Spectrum, FHMA, Multiple Underwater Vehicles

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	N. Richard and U. Mitra, “Sparse Channel Estimation for Cooperative Underwater Communications: A Structured Multichannel Approach,” IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Las Vegas, 2008, pp. 5300-5303.
[2]	A. Song and M. Badiey, “Generalized Equalization for Underwater Acoustic Communications,” Proceedings of MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2005, San Diego, Vol. 2, 2005, pp. 1522-1527.
[3]	J.-W. Han, H.-J. Ju, K.-M. Kim, et al., “A Study on the Cooperative Diversity Technique with Amplify and For-ward for Underwater Wireless Communication,” OC- EANS 2008, MTS/IEEE Kobe Techno-Ocean, Kobe, 2008, pp. 1-3.
[4]	J. Trubuil, A. Goalic and N. Beuzelin, “A Low Bit-Rate Speech Underwater Acoustic Phone Using Channel Cod-ing for Quality Improvement,” Proceedings of IEEE Mil-itary Communications Conference MILCOM, Orlando, 2007, pp. 1-7.
[5]	T. C. Yang and W.-B. Yang, “Low Signal-to-Noise-Ratio Underwater Acoustic Communications Using Direct- Sequence Spread-Spectrum Signals,” OCEANS 2007— Europe, Aberdeen, 2007, pp. 1-6.
[6]	C. B. He and J. G. Huang, “Underwater Acoustic Spread Spectrum Communication Based on M Family N group Parallel Transmission,” OCEANS 2006—Asia Pacific, Singapore, 2007, pp. 1-4.
[7]	X.-Y. Wang, Z.-F. Zhu and S.-L. Fang, “Noncooperative Detection and Parameter Estimation of Underwater Acoustic DSSS-BPSK Signal,” 14th International Con-ference on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice, Xiamen, 2007, pp. 52-56.
[8]	S. X. Guo and Z. X. Zhao, “A CDMA Acoustic Commu-nication System for Multiple Underwater Robots,” Pro-ceedings of the 2008 IEEE, International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, Bangkok, 2008, pp. 1522- 1526.
[9]	Z. X. Zhao and S. X. Guo, “A QPSK-CDMA Based Ac- oustic Communication System for Multiple Underwater Vehicles,” Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Information, Kitakyushu, 2009, pp.124-127.
[10]	S.-J. Hwang and P. Schniter, “Efficient Multicarrier Communication for Highly Spread Underwater Acoustic Channels,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Commun- ications, Vol. 26, No. 9, 2008, pp. 1674-1683.
[11]	S. Roy, T. M. Duman, V. McDonald, J. G. Proakis, “High-Rate Communication for Underwater Acoustic Ch- annels Using Multiple Transmitters and Space–Time Co- ding: Receiver Structures and Experimental Results,” IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2007, pp. 663-688.
[12]	M. Stojanovic and L. Freitag, “Multichannel Detection for Wideband Underwater Acoustic CDMA Communica-tions,” IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2006, pp. 685-695.
[13]	R. J. Vaccaro, “The Past, Present, and Future of Under-water Acoustic Processing,” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 4, July 1998, pp. 21-51.
[14]	R. J. Urick, “Principles of Underwater Sound (3rd Edi-tion),” New York, McGraw-Hill, 1983.
[15]	J. G. Proakis, “Digital Communications (4th Edition),” MeGraw-Hill Science, New York, 2000.
[16]	S. X. Guo, Z. X. Zhao, “Design of a QPSK-CDMA Acoustic Communication System for Multiple Underwater Vehicles,” IEEE International Conference on Mecha-tronics and Automation, Changchun, 2009, pp. 3568- 3572.