Channel Emulator Framework for Underwater Acoustic Communications

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a tractable mathematical model and an emulation framework for communicating information through water using acoustic signals. Water is considered one of the most complex media to model due to its vastness and variety of characteristics, which depend on the scenario, the type of water body (lakes, rivers, tanks, sea, etc.), and the geographical location of the water body being considered. Our proposed mathematical model involves the concept of damped harmonic oscillators to represent the medium (water); Milne’s oscillator technique is used to map the interaction between the acoustic signal and water. Wave equations formulated for acoustic pressure and acoustic wave velocity are employed to characterise the travelling acoustic signal. The signal strength, phase shift, and time delay generated from the mathematical model are then inputted into a Simulink-based emulator framework to generate channel samples and channel impulse responses. The emulator utilises the wide sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) assumption and a finite sum-of-sinusoids (SOS) approach with a uniformly distributed phase to generate the channel samples. By utilising this emulator platform, it becomes feasible to generate profiles for amplitude variation, the Doppler shift, and spread experienced by any travelling signal in various underwater communication scenarios. Such a platform can be employed to simulate different communication scenarios, underwater network topologies, and data for training various learning models. Additionally, it can predict the performance of different modulation, multiplexing, error correction, and multi-access techniques for underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) systems.