Underwater Acoustic Communications: Long-Term Test of Turbo Equalization in Shallow Water

Acoustic telemetry sea trials lasting for three months with experiment periods of 7 h have been carried out, using a turbo receiver. The communication channel is shallow; the depth is approximately 10 m, and the range is 850 m, showing variable multipath. The wind speed and the sound-speed profile (SSP) are measured during some of the experiments. The results show reliable communication over the entire period and performance improvement of the turbo receiver compared to a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) used as reference receiver. The noise in the experiment data suggests significant deviations from the Gaussian assumption, and analysis of turbo receiver performance under heavy-tailed noise is presented.