Coherent Underwater Acoustic Communication: Channel Modeling and Receiver Design

High frequency acoustic communication (8-50 kHz) has attracted much attention recently due to increasing scientific and commercial activities in the marine environment. Based on multiple at-sea experiments, we have developed a number of communication techniques to address the receiver design challenges, resulting in significant data rate increases in the dynamic ocean. Our studies also show that it is possible to simulate the acoustic communication channel for its intensity profile, temporal coherence, and Doppler spread, leading to realistic representations of the at-sea measurements. We present our recent results in these two aspects, receiver design and channel modeling, for the mentioned frequency band.