Multiuser chirp modulation for underwater acoustic channel based on VTRM

In this paper, an ascheme is proposed for multiuser underwater acoustic communication by using the multi-chirp rate signals. It differs from the well known TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access), FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) or CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access), by assigning each users with different chirp-rate carriers instead of the time, frequency or PN code. Multi-chirp rate signals can be separated from each other by FrFT (Fractional Fourier Transform), which can be regarded as the chirp-based decomposing, and superior to the match filter in the underwater acoustic channel. VTRM (Virtual Time Reverse Mirror) is applied into the system to alleviate the ISI caused by the multipatch and make the equalization more simple. Results of computer simulations and pool experiments prove that the proposed multiuser underwater acoustic communication based on the multi-chirp rate exhibit well performance. Outfield experments carrie out in Xiamen Port show that using about 10 kHz bandwidth, four users could communicate at the same time with 425 bps with low BER and can match the UAC application.