A Parametric Study of an Implementing Adaptive Time Reversal Mirror as a Crosstalk Mechanism for Underwater Communication

The time reversal mirror technique has been widely applied to mitigate the inter-symbol interference in underwater channels. Meanwhile, an adaptive time reversal mirror is introduced to improve the crosstalk quality between receivers in underwater acoustic communication (UAC). However, array configuration affects the performance of this mechanism. To explore the effectiveness of this method, this study extended the analysis of adaptive time reversal mirror as a crosstalk mechanism and explored the mechanism in an experiment using a towing tank as a testing platform. The advantage of this process is its simplicity in examining the effects of the array configuration of this crosstalk mechanism. Results of parametric experiments are discussed i.e., the effects of signal to noise ratio in a single and multi-channel, number of receivers, spacing between sources and noise energy threshold. Experimental data at 10 and 16 kHz with a 5-kHz bandwidth demonstrate as much as an 8-dB signal to noise ratio improvement for four receivers dual sources over a 30 m communication range in a 3.3 m depth testing platform. The results indicate that adaptive time reversal mirror has better performance when the number of receivers increases. Overall, the performance of adaptive time reversal mirror is better than time reversal mirror in terms of BER and SNR. Also, the array configuration such as number of receivers and spacing between sources affects the performance of SNR and BER. This technique can be applied as the alternative way to increase the data rate at short ranges for multiple-input-multiple-output communication applications.