Time Reversal Receivers for Underwater Acoustic Communication Using Vector Sensors

Acoustic communication often relies on a large size array with multiple spatially separated hydrophones to deal with the challenging underwater channel. This poses serious limitation to its application at compact size underwater platforms, for example, autonomous underwater vehicles. In this paper, we propose to use vector sensors to achieve reliable acoustic communication. Using experimental data, we show the usefulness of particle velocity channels for acoustic communication. Further, to deal with the dynamic ocean environment, a time reversal multichannel receiver is proposed to utilize particle velocity channels. Our results show that the receiver using vector sensors can offer significant size reduction, compared to the receiver based on the pressure sensors, while providing comparable communication performance.