On the Achievable Rate of Multiple-Input–Multiple-Output Underwater Acoustic Communications

Pierre-Jean Bouvet (1) , Yves Auffret (1)

1 LABISEN-SEACOM - Systèmes Embarqués, Acoustique et Télécommunications

This paper investigates the data gain brought by Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) principle for Underwater Acoustic (UWA) communication. By considering a class of acoustic MIMO channel where each fading coefficient is modelled by a Rice distribution law with correlation factor depending on channel Doppler spread, we derive the achievable rate of such system that takes into account both channel estimation error and training sequence overhead. Model parameters are then estimated from an experiment campaign in MIMO shallow water channel conducted in the roadstead of Brest, France. The system achievable rate is evaluated for several MIMO architectures and channel configurations and then compared against conventional Single Input Multiple Output (SIMO) transmission. The achievable rate gain is finally put in perspective with end-to-end data rate performance of a single carrier MIMO transmission system experimented at sea. Index Terms Underwater acoustic communications, channel capacity, information rate, MIMO.

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Pierre-Jean Bouvet, Yves Auffret. On the Achievable Rate of Multiple-Input–Multiple-Output Underwater Acoustic Communications. IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2019, 45 (3), pp.1126-1137. ⟨10.1109/JOE.2019.2916120⟩. ⟨hal-02975480⟩