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Effects Of Ocean Thermocline Variability On Noncoherent Underwater Acoustic Communications, Martin Siderius, Michael B. Porter, Paul Hursky, Vincent Mcdonald

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The performance of acoustic modems in the ocean is strongly affected by the oceanenvironment. A storm can drive up the ambient noise levels, eliminate a thermocline by wind mixing, and whip up violent waves and thereby break up the acoustic mirror formed by theocean surface. The combined effects of these and other processes on modem performance are not well understood. The authors have been conducting experiments to study these environmental effects on various modulation schemes. Here the focus is on the role of the thermocline on a widely used modulation scheme (frequency-shift keying). Using data from a recent experiment conducted …