Linear Equalization Techniques for Underwater Acoustic OFDM Communication

Abstract

Multicarrier acoustic communication has enabled wireless underwater transmission at higher data rates. Several multicarrier modulation systems have been explored in the past for data transmission. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) fights-off inter-symbol-interference due to orthogonality of the carriers. However, it is susceptible to time variations which introduces inter-carrier-interference. Being double selective, the underwater acoustic (UWA) channel is both time and frequency variant. Time variations and multipath fading makes it a complex channel to estimate. In this paper, we explore linear frequency domain equalization techniques available for radio OFDM systems and compare their performance for a shallow underwater acoustic channel. The underwater channel model used is based on Rician shadowed distribution with Doppler shifts. We compare the performance of a linear equalizer with pilot estimated channel against a zero-forcing equalizer where the channel is assumed to be known. Results collected through Monte Carlo simulations show that for a 128-subcarrier OFDM system and a transmitter-receiver separation of 800 m, a gain of almost 7dB is obtained at a BER of 10−3 when a zero-forcing equalizer is used. Moreover, when the subcarriers are increased to 256, this gain almost doubles. In conclusion, the zero-forcing equalizer outperforms the LS equalizer for an underwater acoustic channel.