Comments: (pdf),
Ref.: IEEE Access, Vol.10, pp.66952, June 2022
Abstract:
This paper investigates how to advantageously combine acoustic vector sensor field
components for underwater communications. The joint vector sensor beam steering and passive time-reversal
receiver structure is proposed and compared against beam steering and standard passive time-reversal
separately. The beam steering method takes into account proper directions in order to benefit from
highly correlated channels. On the other hand, passive time-reversal was weighted to avoid combinations
of possible noisy channels. Performance of receiver structures are quantified using simulation and recorded
data from a shallow-water field experiment. In this experiment, a four-element three-dimensional vector
sensor array was tied to a drifting ship receiving coherent communication signals from a bottom-moored
sound source. Analytical expressions and a numerical simulation based on the experimental acoustic
scenario indicate a relationship between source-receiver ranges and the vector sensor channels correlation,
providing an initial understanding of the suitability of each receiver structure. Then, using individual or
combined vector sensors, such structures were tested with experimental data, where the range relationship
hypothesis from the simulation was nearly confirmed. Error analysis shows that shorter ranges favour the
beam steering, whereas channels diversity is mostly explored in longer ranges. Furthermore, the proposed
joint method, designed for vector sensors, has achieved up to ten times less error than individual approaches,
also showing the benefit of exploring beamforming and diversity together.
©1992-2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from IEEE.