Adaptive Modulation Schemes for Underwater Acoustic OFDM Communication

High data rate communication is challenging in underwater acoustic (UA) communication as UA channels vary fast along with the environmental factors. A real-time Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based adaptive UA communication system is studied in this research employing the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW software and NI CompactDAQ device. The developed adaptive modulation schemes enhance the reliability of communication, guarantee continuous connectivity, ensure maximum performance under a fixed BER at all times and boost data rate

Real-Time Adaptive Modulation Schemes for Underwater Acoustic OFDM Communication

Adaptive modulation received significant attention for underwater acoustic (UA) communication systems with the aim of increasing the system efficiency. It is challenging to attain a high data rate in UA communication, as UA channels vary fast, along with the environmental factors. For a time-varying UA channel, a self-adaptive system is an attractive option, which can choose the best method according to the channel condition to guarantee the continuous connectivity and high performance constantly. A real-time orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based adaptive UA communication system is presented in this paper, employing the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW software and NI CompactDAQ device. In this paper, the received SNR is considered as a performance metric to select the transmission parameters, which are sent back to the transmitter for data transmission. In this research, a UA OFDM communication system is developed, employing adaptive modulation schemes for a nonstationary UA environment which allows to select subcarriers, modulation size, and allocate power adaptively to enhance the reliability of communication, guarantee continuous connectivity, and boost data rate. The recent UA communication experiments carried out in the Canning River, Western Australia, verify the performance of the proposed adaptive UA OFDM system, and the experimental results confirm the superiority of the proposed adaptive scheme

An underwater acoustic OFDM system based on NI CompactDAQ and LabVIEW

Recently the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique has attracted increasing interests in underwater acoustic (UA) communications. In this paper, we present an OFDM-based UA communication system, which is designed based on the National Instruments LabVIEW software and the CompactDAQ device. Details on both the transmitter and receiver system design are discussed. The performance of this UA OFDM system is verified through recent UA communication experiments performed in a tank, in the Canning River, and in the estuary of the Swan River, Western Australia. Experimental results show that the system achieves a reliable bit error rate performance even with high-order modulation schemes. Compared with conventional field-programmable gate array and digital signal processor based designs, the proposed implementation simplifies the prototype design process and reduces the software development time. The proposed system provides a flexible and reconfigurable prototype for researchers to test and validate the performance of UA communication algorithms in real UA channels