Low-Complexity Progressive MIMO-OFDM Receiver for Underwater Acoustic Communication

Abstract

Multiple Input Multiple Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) proves to be a better choice for high speed underwater acoustic (UWA) communication as it increases the data rate and solves the bandwidth limitation issue; however, at the same time, it increases the design challenges and complexity of the receivers. Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) are introduced in the received signal by the extended multipath and Doppler shifts along with different types of noises due to the noisy acoustic channel. Here we propose two iterative receivers: one is ICI unaware iterative MIMO-OFDM receiver, which uses a novel cost function threshold based soft information decision feedback method. The second one is ICI aware progressive iterative MIMO-OFDM receiver, which adapts and increases the progressions according to the level of ICI present in the received signal, while fully utilizing the soft information from the previous iterations, therefore reducing the complexity. Orthogonal Matching pursuit (OMP) channel estimation, low density parity check (LDPC) decoding and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization schemes are exploited by both the receivers. The proposed receivers are analyzed and compared with the standard Alamouti MIMO receiver as a reference and also compared with the non-iterative, basic turbo iterative and non-progressive iterative MIMO receivers. Simulations and experimental results prove the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed receivers.