Short-Block-Length Low-Density Parity-Check Codes-Based Underwater Acoustic Spread-Spectrum Communication System

Underwater acoustic communications are required for controlling and networking a variety of underwater or sea surface objects. Due to the unique characteristics of the underwater acoustic channel, e.g., complicated multipath propagation, selective frequency fading, extreme Doppler effect and heavy ambient noise, FH-MFSK techniques play a vital role in robust underwater acoustic communication, especially in shallow water. However, based on detecting the frequency of the receiving signals, the demodulation scheme for FH-MFSK may be sensitive to the frequency shifting caused by underwater Doppler shifts. This paper focuses on how to design the frequency demodulation scheme and to improve the performance of underwater FH-MFSK acoustic communication system. By using an original Double-Line Interpolation algorithm with Hanning window, we propose a demodulation scheme to enhance the tolerance of the Doppler shift and improve the detection rate. Simulations and demodulation performance were tested. Experimental results show a promising future for FH-MFSK demodulation in underwater acoustic communication system.

Due to the simultaneous existence of severe difficulties caused by multi-path, Doppler, and environmental noise caused by underwater acoustic channels, designing a stable and reliable underwater acoustic communication system (UWACS) is a challenging task. In addition to channel estimation and equalization, the technique of channel codes, which is capable of approaching Shannon’s capacity at a low encoding and decoding complexity, offers an efficient and reliable solution to improve the performance of the UWACS and thus draws extensive attention from the research community. By seeking a balance between communication efficiency and channel tolerance via multiple coding rate tuning, it has been recognized that the rate-compatible codes can achieve smooth rate-adaptive transmission under highly diverse underwater acoustic channel states. While there has been a substantial number of investigations on rate-compatible channel codes for the UWACS, in this paper, the research of rate-compatible channel codes has been summarized, reviewed, and compared, mainly focusing on the low-density parity-check (LDPC) and polar codes, which render flexibility in terms of code length and rate. Furthermore, typical research was evaluated and compared from the practical viewpoint of performance under real noise in a shallow water environment. Finally, problems encountered by the LDPC and polar codes for the UWACS were highlighted, and several future research issues were discussed.

Direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) signal uses phase coherent signals where the information symbols are multiplied with a code sequence, commonly known as chips. The signals are processed at the receiver using the code sequence as a matched filter to extract the information symbols. Taking advantage of the spread processing gain derived from the matched filter, communications can be carried out at low signal levels, which is the preferred method for high quality underwater acoustic (UWA) communication and remote UWA communication. However, in practical applications, DSSS UWA communication will face lots of interferences including multipath interference, Doppler compression interference and phase fluctuation interference, which will seriously affect the performance of DSSS. This paper first analyzes the interferences that DSSS faces in practical applications based on multiple actual received data collected in different water areas. By calculating the gain of the matched filter loss, one can find that influence of phase fluctuation interference has the most serious impact on DSSS. Secondly, the corresponding receiver processing algorithms are given for these interferences, including the differential energy detector and Doppler estimation method. The performance of differential energy detector under the above interferences is analyzed, which shows that the differential energy detector is insensitive to slow phase fluctuation interference and multipath interference and the differential energy detector combined with Doppler compensation can work well based on moving at-sea data. Finally, the parameter design of DSSS system in practical application is discussed and parameter design of DSSS UWA communication system should comprehensively consider the Doppler compression interference and phase fluctuation interference.

A signal transmitted in an Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) system operating in a shallow-water channel suffers from strong time dispersion due to multipath propagation. This causes the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) observed in the received signal, which significantly limits the communication system’s reliability and transmission rate. In such propagation conditions, the Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) method is one of the solutions that make reliable data transmission possible. In systems with one-to-one communication, it ensures communication with a satisfactory Bit Error Rate (BER). Additionally, it makes it possible to implement the Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) protocol in underwater acoustic networks. This paper presents the results of simulation and experimental communication tests on a DSSS-based UAC system using three types of spreading sequence, namely m-sequences, Kasami codes and Gold codes, and occupying different bandwidths from 1 kHz to 8 kHz around a carrier frequency equal to 30 kHz. The UAC channel was simulated by impulse responses calculated by the virtual sources method and the UAC chanel models available in the Watermark simulator. The experimental tests were conducted in a model pool. Based on the obtained results, a transmission rate was estimated, which is possible to achieve in strong multipath propagation conditions, assuming reliability expressed as BER less than 0.001.

To address the inability to quantitatively analyze the performance of the direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) communication system in the presence of short-period pseudo-noise (PN) sequences, this study derives the interference components resulting from correlation processing of single-frequency interference. Given the short period of the spread spectrum sequence used in underwater acoustic systems, a theoretical expression is proposed for analyzing the anti-single-frequency interference performance of DSSS communication systems in underwater acoustics. This expression combines the interference power output by the system to enable quantitative analysis. Simulations are conducted to validate the accuracy of the theoretical expression. The results reveal that the interference sequence generated by correlation processing assumes either a direct current (DC) or sinusoidal distribution. The bit error rate (BER) of the system is influenced by signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), interference frequency offset, phase deviation, and the structure of the spreading code itself. The BER exhibits regular variation with changes in the interference phase. In all working conditions where the interference frequency offset is an integer multiple of the bit bandwidth, single-frequency interference with a frequency offset equivalent to the bit bandwidth has the greatest impact on the system. The concise theoretical expression presented in this study has significant practical value as it allows for quick prediction of variation in the anti-single-frequency interference performance of underwater acoustic DSSS communication systems using short-period PN sequences.

TCN-based M-ary mobile spread spectrum underwater acoustic communication

As the dominant information carrier in water, the acoustic wave is widely used for underwater detection, communication and imaging. Even though underwater acoustic communication has been greatly improved in the past decades, it still suffers from slow transmission speeds and low information capacity. The recently developed acoustic orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing communication promises a high efficiency, large capacity and fast transmission speed for acoustic communication. However, the current works on OAM multiplexing communication mainly appear in airborne acoustics. The application of acoustic OAM for underwater communication remains to be further explored and studied. In this paper, an impedance matching pentamode demultiplexing metasurface is designed to realize multiplexing and demultiplexing in underwater acoustic communication. The impedance matching of the metasurface ensures high transmission of the transmitted information. The information encoded into two different OAM beams as two independent channels is numerically demonstrated by realizing real-time picture transfer. The simulation shows the effectiveness of the system for underwater acoustic multiplexing communication. This work paves the way for experimental demonstration and practical application of OAM multiplexing for underwater acoustic communication.

This letter gives a random construction for Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes, which uses an iterative algorithm to avoid short cycles in the Tanner graph. The construction method has great flexible choice in LDPC code’s parameters including codelength, code rate, the least girth of the graph, the weight of column and row in the parity check matrix. The method can be applied to the irregular LDPC codes and strict regular LDPC codes. Systemic codes have many applications in digital communication, so this letter proposes a construction of the generator matrix of systemic LDPC codes from the parity check matrix. Simulations show that the method performs well with iterative decoding.

Turbo codes are attractive compared with Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes for Forward Error Correction (FEC) applications mainly due to their superior performance, especially at low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) such as are common in Powerline channels. For example, IEEE 1901-FFT PHY used the Turbo coding scheme defined in the HomePlug AV standards. However, patent fees are usually required for each turbo-code enabled manufactured device. The objective of this paper is to examine whether unlicensed LDPC codes, with optimized choices of block lengths, could be a viable alternative for future Powerline Communications (PLC) applications. The paper shows that the performance of the LDPC codes can approximate that of the Turbo codes with higher block lengths, on channels with typical and realistic PLC characteristics. The paper also shows that the additional complexity associated with this increase in block length can be mitigated by the use of Quasi-Cyclic LDPC (QC-LDPC) codes.

Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes have capacity-approaching performance over several channels of interest. In practice, for good block-error rate performance, the girth of the Tanner graph of an LDPC code needs to be as high as possible. In theory, to show that block-error rate approaches zero for increasing block-lengths, the girth of the Tanner graph sequence needs to tend to infinity with block-length. To meet these requirements, we construct sequences of large-girth irregular LDPC codes for a given degree-distribution pair (DDP) by applying a general node splitting algorithm on large girth graphs. The obtained Tanner graph meets the required DDP up to a suitable approximation. By optimizing the node-splitting method and using suitable large-girth graphs, we show code constructions with smaller block length for the same girth, when compared to previous constructions. Similar gains in block length are observed in the construction of sequences of large-girth protograph LDPC codes. Simulations, over a binary erasure channel, confirm the gains in block-error rate obtained by the large girth construction.

Big data storage demands larger cluster. The increasing size of the cluster may lead to failures of larger number of nodes. To provide reliable big data storage, replications are not cost-effective and does not provide a robust solution to prevent data loss. Traditional erasure codes applied in the RAID system such as Reed-Solomon (R-S) based solutions have limitations in providing high reliability. This is because higher reliability requires erasure codes with larger size. The computational cost of the R-S codes increase quadratically with the number of failures the R-S codes can tolerate for the same redundancy rate. It has been shown that Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes have lower computational cost and repair network traffic compared with R-S based solutions. Unfortunately, there does not exist a construction method for LDPC codes with larger size to control the computational cost and repair traffic. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to construct a family of LDPC codes - expanCodes with expandable sizes. The proposed expanCodes allows the encoding and decoding complexity remain unchanged with the increase of the size of the LDPC codes. As a result, increased reliability can be achieved without additional computation and repair traffic. The proposed expanCodes is integrated with the Hadoop system. Simulations show that more than 29% decrease in terms of encoding and decoding latency compared with R-S based solutions.

Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are Shannon-Limit approaching codes. Shannon stated the theoretical bounds for digital data transmission in a given channel capacity with error correction coding. Spread Spectrum also called as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) is an efficient way of radio wave communication deployed in commercial broadcasts, ham radios, military communications, police radios, etc. CDMA is a means of signal transmission in which the signal frequency is spread over a very wide bandwidth. Spreading of data is achieved prior to transmission with the help of an independent code called ‘Pseudo Noise Code’ (PN sequences), which is subsequently used in the receiver end to de-spread the signal received in order to recover the signal data. PN sequences based on prime numbers like Legendre & Weil sequences are used in the present work. An impressive part of LDPC lies in its decoding algorithm. Sum-Product Algorithm (SPA) decoding offers the best error performance amongst all the types of decoding techniques of LDPC codes and thus applied here. This paper demonstrates an idea of introducing LDPC codes along with DS-Spread Spectrum technique using Legendre & Weil sequences. In the present work, the encoding and decoding algorithms are applied after spreading of the signal. SPA decoding technique is successfully employed and simulated results are plotted taking an example design to illustrate the concepts discussed above.

In recent years, underwater acoustic (UWA) communications have received much attention as their applications have begun to shift from military toward commercial. Digital communications through UWA channels differ substantially from those in other media, such as radio channels, due to severe signal degradations caused by multipath propagation and high temporal and spatial variability of the channel conditions. The design of underwater acoustic communication systems has until recently relied on the use of noncoherent modulation techniques. However, to achieve high data rates on the severely band-limited UWA channels, bandwidth-efficient modulation techniques must be considered, together with array processing for exploitation of spatial multipath diversity. The new generation of underwater communication systems, employing phase-coherent modulation techniques, has a potential of achieving at least an order of magnitude increase in data throughput. The emerging communication scenario in which the modern underwater acoustic systems mill operate is that of an underwater network consisting of stationary and mobile nodes. Current research focuses on the development of efficient signal processing algorithms, multiuser communications in the presence of interference, and design of efficient modulation and coding schemes. This paper presents a review of recent results and research problems in high-speed underwater acoustic communications, focusing on the bandwidth-efficient phase-coherent methods. Experimental results are included to illustrate the state-of-the-art coherent detection of digital signals transmitted at 30 and 40 kb/s through a rapidly varying one-mile shallow water channel.

DOI: 10.1049/cp:20061337 ISBN: 0 86341 644 6 Location: Hangzhou, China Conference date: 6-9 Nov. 2006 Format: PDF The BER performance of presented quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is not good as that of randomly constructed LDPC codes, while the lack of structure of randomly constructed LDPC codes implies serious disadvantages in terms of storing and accessing a large parity-check matrix. To solve the problems, this paper proposes a design of good quasi-cyclic (QC) low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, the obtained algebraically structured codes have large minimum distances and good BER performance. The proposed design is based on index matrices, which determines the shifts of the circulant matrices of the sparse parity-check matrices. Compared with the presented design of QC LDPC codes, the designed QC LDPC codes are free from girth 4, sometimes free from girth 6, and have much larger minimum distances. Based on the algebraic code structure, the conditions of the girth and minimum distance of the codes are found. The BER performance of the designed QC LDPC block codes compares with that of randomly constructed LDPC codes for any block lengths. Better BER performance is obtained by increasing the circulant size of the base QC code. Simulations verify the construction of the QC LDPC codes to be valid. (4 pages) Inspec keywords: AWGN channels; error statistics; channel coding; algebraic codes; parity check codes; sparse matrices Subjects: Algebra; Other topics in statistics; Codes

We propose a novel concatenated coding scheme combined Low Density Parity Check(LDPC) code and vertical Bell Labs layered space-time (VBLAST) code to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance for Free-space optical (FSO) communication links with On Off Keying(OOK) modulation. In the scheme, π-rotation encoding and belief-propagation (BP) decoding algorithm are employed in LDPC code, and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) soft-decision decoding algorithm is used for VBLAST code. Moreover, a joint iterative detection and decoding algorithm of VBLAST code and LDPC code is used to improve the overall link performance. At last, the BER of the proposed scheme over lognormal atmospheric turbulent fading channels is analyzed by using Monte Carlo method. The result shows that the BER of the proposed concatenated coding scheme is much improved than that only use VBLAST code scheme.