Performance of an Underwater Communication System in a Sea Trial Done in the Canadian Arctic

Global warming makes progressively accessible large bodies of water in the Arctic. This gives rise to growing interest for underwater communications across long distances to support defense, search and rescue, emergency response and environmental monitoring applications. In our previous works, we have developed a communication system aiming to achieve long rage communications in the harsh conditions of the Canadian Arctic. Our communication system uses techniques particularly well adapted to noisy environments, high attenuation and narrow bandwidth. It provides physical and link layer functionalities. Its theoretical bandwidth is very narrow (less than five Hertz), making the signal suitable for very long range underwater propagation. During the summer of 2019, the communication system has been tested in a sea trial conducted in the Canadian Arctic. In this paper, we review the conditions of the sea trial and performance achieved by our communication system.