Acoustic Communication Using Time-Reversal Signal Processing: Spatial and Frequency Diversity

Time-reversal signal processing can be viewed as a form of matched filtering that operates both in time and in space. Acoustic communication represents a promising potential application of the processing. In designing a communications system, constraints are imposed by the available bandwidth and by the geometry of the time-reversal array. In the present paper, the interplay between bandwidth and array geometry is examined. If the bandwidth is large relative to the symbol rate, time -reversal processing can be successful with sparse arrays. If the array is well populated, the required bandwidth can be reduced. Results from experiments and data-driven simulations are presented.