Single carrier with multi-channel time-frequency domain equalization for underwater acoustic communications

Single-carrier with frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) has been considered for bandwidth efficiency underwater acoustic (UWA) communication recently due to its reduced computational complexity and low peak-to-average power ratio. A multi-channel time-frequency domain equalization method for pseudurandom noise (PN) based SC-FDE is proposed in this paper. The proposed equalizer includes a multi-channel frequency domain equalizer followed by a low order multi-channel adaptive time domain decision feedback equalizer (DFE). The proposed algorithm is applied to the real data receiving from a lake test conducted in November 2011. It is demonstrated that the uncoded error-free data rates of around 1500 and 3000 bps are achieved using one transmitter and six-channel receiving hydrophone array at a distance of 1.8 km. Experiment results shows that the performance can be enhanced by 4.5-5.5 dB in terms of output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).