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Ref.: Global OCEANS MTS/IEEE, October 2021
Abstract: Coastal upwelling is a dynamical oceanographic process that severely modifies ocean temperature stratification, and, therefore, impacts acoustic propagation. The increasing ocean noise levels due to man-made activities not only contribute to hamper the acoustic modem performance but also affect marine life. The impacts of oceanographic processes over communications are not well understood. This paper presents a study on the effects of coastal upwelling over low SNR communications in shallow water. The focus is on the role of ocean temperature stratification induced by the upwelling regime off the Cabo Frio Island (Brazil) over broadband low power coherent modulated signals. Based on data from the BioCom’19 experiment, numerical simulations using the Monterey-Miami Parabolic Equation model (MMPE) were used to compare the acoustic propagation for typical sound speed profiles, indicating a complex channel to establish communications. Furthermore, low SNR communication performance was correlated to the temperature profiles during the experiment. The resulting bit error rates show that temporal averaging of recorded low power signals was able to cope with this challenging environment.
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