Experimental demonstration of single carrier underwater acoustic communication using a vector sensor

Vector sensors could simultaneously collect not only pressure but also velocity signals and there will be a valuable gain when combining these two kinds of signals properly. This paper studies single carrier underwater acoustic (UWA) communication using a vector sensor. In a recent field experiment, acoustic communication transmissions were carried out over a 1 km range in shallow water at Songhua River, Heilongjiang province, China. The same coded signal was transmitted when the vector sensor was deployed to depth of 1 m, 1.5 m, 2 m, and 2.5 m respectively. Decoding results, that nearly error-free performance at four depths, show the robustness of UWA communications using a single vector sensor in a highly refractive environment. The four received signals are also combined together to asynchronously realize a vertical array processing using passive time reversal based on the spatial and temporal diversity, achieving a maximum gain about 8.02 dB compared with a single sensor processing.