Exploitation of Environmental Complexity in Shallow Water Acoustic Data Communications

The origin of this research is our experience with carrying out ocean acoustic time reversal experiments over a broad range of frequencies. Through a series of experiments conducted jointly between MPL and the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC), we have demonstrated that complexity of the ocean environment fundamentally is advantageous and facilitates rather than inhibits the resolution of physical processes, detection of targets, and acoustic telemetry of data. Furthermore, the time reversal experiments have illustrated that the ocean maintains a far greater inherent coherence than previously has been thought possible. Thus, the overall goal of this research is to take advantage of the self-adaptive nature of the complex ocean environment and learn how to exploit fluctuations, scattering, and variability.