MIMO-OFDM: an experimental study on underwater acoustic communication

Oceans are progressively gaining importance around the globe as nations turn to them as a source of energy and resources. In this context, the development of underwater communications becomes crucial for the proper development of these activities. These communications, however, come with challenges of their own that researchers need to overcome to create reliable and low latency systems. In this project, we focus on underwater acoustic communications and aim to find a solution for the bandwidth restrictions they present. Specifically, we will focus on proving the viability, using real-life data collected at the Suruga Bay in Japan, of MIMO-OFDM to solve the problem at hand. Using the collected results of the 10km underwater link SIMO experiment, we will apply reverse engineering to obtain real underwater acoustic channels. Once obtained, we will create a MIMO-OFDM system and test its configuration parameters to prove the viability of the system. Results confirm the spectral efficiency improvement when MIMO-OFDM is introduced, and encourages the development of such systems in the future. We also provide a deep analysis on the system parameters and conclude on the optimal configuration for future designs.