Statistical Characterization and Computationally Efficient Modeling of a Class of Underwater Acoustic Communication Channels

Underwater acoustic channel models provide a tool for predicting the performance of communication systems before deployment, and are thus essential for system design. In this paper, we offer a statistical channel model which incorporates physical laws of acoustic propagation (frequency-dependent attenuation, bottom/surface reflections), as well as the effects of inevitable random local displacements. Specifically, we focus on random displacements on two scales: those that involve distances on the order of a few wavelengths, to which we refer as small-scale effects, and those that involve many wavelengths, to which we refer as large-scale effects. Small-scale effects include scattering and motion-induced Doppler shifting, and are responsible for fast variations of the instantaneous channel response, while large-scale effects describe the location uncertainty and changing environmental conditions, and affect the locally averaged received power. We model each propagation path by a large-scale gain and micromultipath components that cumulatively result in a complex Gaussian distortion. Time- and frequency-correlation properties of the path coefficients are assessed analytically, leading to a computationally efficient model for numerical channel simulation. Random motion of the surface and transmitter/receiver displacements introduce additional variation whose temporal correlation is described by Bessel-type functions. The total energy, or the gain contained in the channel, averaged over small scale, is modeled as log-normally distributed. The models are validated using real data obtained from four experiments. Specifically, experimental data are used to assess the distribution and the autocorrelation functions of the large-scale transmission loss and the short-term path gains. While the former indicates a log-normal distribution with an exponentially decaying autocorrelation, the latter indicates a conditional Ricean distribution with Bessel-type autocorrelation.