Filtered-OFDM with channel coding based on T-distribution noise for underwater acoustic communication

Bit error rate (BER) is typically high in underwater acoustic (UWA) channel, which is characterized by high propagation delay and poor quality of communications. UWA noise statistics do not follow the standard Gaussian distribution. It has been proven through field tests that the noise follows the t-distribution in Malaysian shallow-water. In this paper, a study on UWA error performance is presented based on t-distribution. Furthermore, the expressions of error performance are derived using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulations order. Moreover, the new waveform filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM) in UWA with turbo and convolution code is adopted. The simulation results show that at BER 10–3, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) is 6 dB and 11 dB for BPSK and QPSK, respectively. The turbo code performance appears to be superior over the convolution code. Furthermore, the results indicate that F-OFDM significantly improves the power spectral density to approximately 120 dBW compared with OFDM.