A study on the distribution of the envelope and the capacity of underwater acoustic channels

This paper deals with the statistical analysis of the instantaneous capacity of shallow underwater acoustic communication (UWAC) channels under the assumption that the scatterers are randomly distributed on the surface and bottom of the ocean. We start by deriving exact closed-form expressions for the probability density function (PDF) of the total propagation path length from which the PDF of the path gains is obtained. Then, we study the distributions of the channel envelope and the capacity under line-of-sight (LOS) conditions. By performing the chi-square goodness-of-fit test, it is shown that the channel envelope is Rice distributed. Moreover, we investigate the effect of the ocean depth as well as the distance between the transmit and receive hydrophones on the investigated statistical quantities. The correctness of the derived closed-form expressions is confirmed by computer simulations.