The Effect of Source Power on Statistical Characterization of Underwater Acoustic Communication Channel in Shallow Water

Recently statistical channel modeling for underwater acoustic communication has been widely studied. Because of the complex ocean environments experimental approaches are used for estimating the statistical properties of communication channels. One can easily imagine that the received data impaired by background noise cannot give the accurate values of statistical parameters. In order to investigate the effect of SNR on the statistical estimation, this paper numerically analyzes the probability density functions for various SNR conditions. The results show that small SNR induces inaccurate statistical channel model when narrow-band signal is used for transmitting sound waves. A field experiment demonstrates similar results but further study should be made to overcome some discrepancies.