Statistical characterization and capacity of shallow water acoustic channels

This paper focuses on statistical characterization and capacity evaluation of shallow water acoustic communications channels. Wideband single-carrier and multi-carrier probe signals are employed to measure the time-varying channel response, and to estimate its statistical properties that play an important role in the design of bandwidth-efficient and power-efficient communication systems. To assess the capacity of an underwater acoustic channel, we first assess the probability density functions that model the signal fading. Rician fading is found to provide a good match for the experimental data collected in the Pacific Ocean during the summer 2008 Kauai acoustic communications experiment (KAM´08). This model is used to evaluate the ergodic channel capacity and the related bandwidth efficiency for both single-input single-output (SISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems.