Building a Database of Ocean Channel Impulse
Responses for Underwater Acoustic Communication
Performance Evaluation: Issues, Requirements, Methods
and Results
T. C. Yang
College of Information Science and Electronic Eng.
Zhejiang University
Hangzhou, P. R. China
+86 182 5816 6122
tsihyang@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
With a growing number of modulation and equalization schemes
proposed for underwater acoustic communications, the need exists
for methods to evaluate the performance of the various methods
under the same channel conditions. An ideal solution is to
develop channel simulators using acoustic propagation models.
However, this effort has not been fruitful since acoustic channel
simulations so far have failed to capture the characteristics of real
ocean channels at practical communication frequencies, except for
special cases where the acoustic environments are well known.
Currently, acoustic communications still rely on field experiments
to evaluate their performance. The problem with the experimental
approach is that each experiment is usually tailored to a particular
modulation scheme and the cost usually prohibits testing of many
different algorithms under the same ocean conditions. Some data-
based channel simulators have been proposed where realizations
of the channel impulse response (CIR) functions are generated
based on the scattering functions estimated from real data but this
method is so far not adequate. A scheme to build ocean channel
database is proposed in this paper, where CIR is deduced from
data on the time scale of a fractional (half) symbol to capture the
fine time scale changes of the channel. The estimated CIRs are
good replica of the true CIRs as evidenced by the negligibly small
(< -20 dB) channel estimation error or the surrogate signal
predication error. The CIR database will allow the developers to
test the performance of different algorithms under the same
realistic ocean conditions without having to conduct experiments
at sea.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
I.5.4 [Applications: Signal processing]
General Terms
Algorithms
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WUWNET 6, October 24 26, 2016, Shanghai, China.
© 2016 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-4637-5/16/10
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2999504.3001082
S. H. Huang
Ocean College
Zhejiang University
Zhoushan, P. R. China
+86 182 6815 7297
davidhuang@zju.edu.cn
Keywords
Underwater acoustic communications, channel tracking.
1. INTRODUCTION
Underwater acoustic communications and networking are
becoming increasingly important, with many potential
applications in environmental monitoring, exploration of the
oceans, and military missions [1]. The literature has witnessed in
recent years a rapid growth of signal modulation schemes and
channel equalization algorithms. There exists consequently a need
to test and evaluate the performance of these proposed schemes
under realistic ocean conditions. Ideally, the evaluation can be
done in the computer if there exists a channel simulator that
captures the characteristics of real oceans communication channel.
Unfortunately, while some of the models proposed [2-7] can
simulate certain aspects of the channel, such as the multipath
structure, transmission loss (as discussed below), few ocean
channel model has demonstrated the capability to simulate the
channel impulse responses (CIRs) that match the data on a time
scale appropriate for communication frequencies; exceptions are
noted below in Sec. II. The reason is that the ocean is
inhomogeneous and complex containing various oceanographic
processes that vary on different time scales and are difficult to
model. Evaluations of algorithms based on existing simulated
channel models are usually not realistic for this reason.
Currently, underwater acoustic communications still rely on
extensive field experiments to evaluate the performance of the
physical-layer algorithms. While all (practical) methods need to
be tested experimentally at sea, the experimental approach has
certain limitations. First, experiments are expensive to conduct,
requiring ship time and also hardware to transmit and receive the
communication signals. Second, each experiment is usually
tailored to a particular modulation scheme - the cost prohibits
testing of many different algorithms under the same ocean
conditions. Currently, a major problem faced by many researchers
is that they do not have experimental data to test their proposed
schemes, since they cannot afford to conduct experiments at sea.
To address the above mentioned problem/shortfall, we propose to
develop a database of CIRs for various oceans based on
previously (and future) collected communication data. The CIRs
serves the same purpose as a channel simulator except that it is
data based (extracted from data) and hence automatically reflects
the real ocean channel. The drawback compared with a channel
simulator is that it needs lots of data to extract the databased CIRs
and hence requires a database. CIRs have been deduced
previously from data divided into blocks using matched filter or
compressive sensing algorithms [8, 9, 10], where each block
contains normally tens to hundreds of symbols. The CIRs so
deduced are inadequate for channel emulation for two reasons.
First, to emulate (or simulate) the channel, one needs to know the
time variation of the CIR on the time scale of a symbol or a
fractional symbol. The CIRs estimated from data blocks are often
too coarse and fail to capture the temporal variations of the
channel on the symbol time scale, which are critical for evaluating
the channel equalizer performance against inter-symbol-
interference (ISI). Second, the channel estimation error using the
conventional methods (that require the block length 2-3 times
longer than the channel length) is usually not so small, hence
cannot be claimed to reflect the true ocean conditions. It was
shown in [11] that improved channel estimation by, for example,
~10 dB can lead to ~10 dB improvement in (soft) symbol decision
errors in the training mode. To obtain ~10 dB improvement in
rapidly fluctuating channels, one needs to estimate the CIR at
(fractional) symbol rate. For such channels, capturing the
fluctuations of the channel at a fast time scale is also important for
studying the effects of micro-fine structures on sound propagation
which are non-negligible at high frequencies. It is noted that
stochastic replays of the estimated CIRs [12, 13] given coarsely
estimated CIRs have the same problem as the model-based
channel simulator since the channel statistics vary significantly
from ocean to ocean and are often unknown; the commonly
assumed Gaussian distributions are often not supported by data as
discussed below.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II gives a summary of
the channel characteristics and the difficulties one faces in
modeling them. The former have been discussed in the literature
but the latter are usually not addressed. Section III
describes/reviews the subspace method which yields negligibly
small (~ -20dB) channel estimation error, order of magnitudes
better than the conventional methods. The small channel
estimation error is credited to the fact that the channel impulse
response is estimated on the time scale of a symbol or fractional
symbol, thus capturing the fine temporal variations of the channel
whic
that have been used to build the database of CIRs which can be
ocean environments. More data will be included in the database in
the future. The CIR database allow the researchers to not only
evaluate their algorithms but also test different algorithms under
the same real ocean environments. Section V provides a short
summary.
2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
UNDERWATER ACOUSTIC CHANNELS
Commonly used attributes to describe an underwater acoustic
channel are the channel multipath structure, delay and Doppler
scattering function (delay spread, Doppler power spectrum /
Doppler spread), time and spatial correlation function, channel
fading statistics (fading duration, level crossing rate). To evaluate
how good the channel model is, one often compares the channel
attributes mentioned above, output signal-to-interference+noise
ratio (SINR), bit error rate (BER) and packet error rate (PER)
evaluated using the channel model against that from the data for a
given input signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). While these are all
important and useful indicators for channel characterization, the
most direct and important measure of how good a channel model
is the channel estimation error (CEE). In terms of performance,
one finds that the output SINR for a decision-feedback equalizer
can be ]. This is because that
the performance of a channel equalizer is determined by how well
the equalizer knows about the channel, as characterized by the
CEE. For underwater acoustic communications, channel
estimation is difficult due to the complexities of the channel as
discussed below.
The communication data can be described by
,
where Ts is the symbol duration, y(kTs) denotes k-th discrete data
samples, p is the source level, hn(t) denotes the n-th tap of the CIR
which is time-dependent, L is the length of the CIR, dk denotes the
kth transmitted data symbols, fc is the carrier frequency, fc is the
Doppler offset, denotes the path-dependent random phase and
nk denotes the ambient noise at t = kTs. The underwater acoustic
channel is complex and different from the radio communications
in the following aspect: (1) There exist many multipaths, namely
that L is large and the delay spread is long often covering tens to
hundreds of symbols. (2) Some channels are fast varying with
time, often at the scale of symbols. In many such channels, the
signal coherence time is found to be on the order of tens to
hundreds of symbols, making channel tracking difficult. (3) The
channel often encounters a random (time-varying) phase due to
signal interactions with the ocean inhomogeneity, which interferes
with symbol decision. Last but not the least, the ratio of Doppler
shift over the carrier frequency is orders of magnitude larger than
radio frequency (RF) communications. Doppler compensation
requires precise estimation of the Doppler shift and accurate
timing of the received symbols (symbol synchronization) which
has been offset by the Doppler-induced signal dilatation or
compression. It is noted that signal fluctuations can be induced by
the oceanographic processes as well as by source-receiver motion.
To study the former, one need to use fixed sources and receivers
to avoid the complications due to motion-induced Doppler effects.
To model and understand the cause and effects of channel
variations/fluctuations, knowledge of the channel physics and the
ocean (acoustic) environment is required. Below is a summary of
the status of the current modeling effort on various channel
properties and the difficulties one faces in constructing the models.
For this discussion, it is useful to describe two propagation
channels: (1) the surface channel where the signal fluctuation is
caused by sound interactions with the rough ocean surface, and (2)
the sound channel where the cause of the signal fluctuation is
predominantly due to sound interaction with the medium
inhomogeneity. In this channel, the effect of the surface waves on
sound propagation is relatively small due to the refractive nature
of the near surface sound speed.
2.1 Transmission Loss
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the input of the receiver is a
critical element in determining the communication BER and is
related to the signal propagation or transmission loss A(R,f) by the
following formula , where R is
the source-receive range, and f is the frequency, p(f) is the source
level and N(f) is the noise level. An empirical transmission loss
model based on the frequency dependence of the bottom and
surface reflection/scattering loss and absorption by seawater is
very popular in the underwater acoustic networking community
[15]. While this model is fine for illustration purpose, it is grossly
misleading to use it to model the communication and networking
performance in real oceans, since transmission loss can change
with range and depth by > 10 dB over a short increment (e.g.,
spatial coherence length) in range and/or depth. The short-scale
range and depth variation is overlooked in this simple
transmission model but is critical in modeling or analyzing real
world data. It was shown that a variation in SNR by 10 dB (due to
signal level change) will have a significant impact on the
networking performance [16].
Currently, the time-averaged or range-averaged transmission loss
can be reasonably adequately modeled in the sound channel,
given the source/receiver range and depths, the ocean sound speed
profile, and the bottom properties using either the ray, normal
mode, or the parabolic equation model. In the surface channel,
one needs the rough surface spectrum in order to model the
transmission loss. The temporal variation of the transmission loss
cannot be modeled realistically. This a real problem for realtime
networking performance forecasting.
2.2 Multipath Propagation Arrival Structures
The mean multipath arrival structure (the number of multi-paths
and the path arrival time) in a sound channel can be modeled
using the ray, normal mode, or the parabolic equation model
given the source/receiver range and depths, the ocean sound speed
profile, ocean sound speed profile and the bottom properties. The
ability to model the multipath arrival structure in a surface
channel depends on how rough the surface is [4, 5, 7]. In the latter
case, the multipath delay and Doppler are coupled. These models
can only be used as a guide. To model the actual CIR, one needs
detailed environmental acoustic information which is often not
available.
2.3 Path Statistics
While many efforts have been done to characterize the path
statistics, one finds that the path statistics are different in different
locations and time. Measurements have revealed that the
multipath amplitude, hn(t), can have a Rayleigh [5], or a Rician
[17], or a Nakagami-m [18], or a K distributed probability
distribution [10, 19] or none of the above [20]. Part of the
problem is that the channel multipath structure and statistics
change with time (non-stationality) and the results may vary
depending on the length of the data analyzed [21]. Consequently,
stochastic reproduction (or Monte Carlo realization) of the CIR
has not been successful compared with the real data, except for
the data for which the statistic is known.
2.4 Temporal and Spatial coherence
Signal fluctuations occur on various time scales. The responsible
mechanisms can be divided into two general groups: storms,
ocean eddies, and internal waves in the first group and ocean
turbulence, fine and micro-fine structure disturbances, and surface
waves in the second group. The first group varies on a time scale
of minutes and days and only affect the transmission loss or large
scale signal fading. The second group varies on the scale of
seconds to milli-seconds, and could greatly affect the ability of the
channel equalizer to track the channel variations. For
communications, one needs to study the inter-packet and intra-
packet temporal coherence [20]. The inter-packet temporal
coherence is the coherence between different communication
packets. This coherence reveals the large scale signal fading and
whether the communication set-up needs to change between
different packets of data. The intra-packet temporal coherence is
the signal (auto-) coherence within a transmission package. It
reveals small scale signal fading and how often the equalizer
coefficients need to be updated. The intra-packet temporal
coherence time may be time varying when the propagation
environment changes.
Coherence time has been measured for various channel conditions
[22, 23, 24]. The data suggests a -1/2 power dependence on range
and -1.5 power dependence on frequency [22]. The length of the
coherence time varies depending on the degree of medium
inhomogeneities, e.g., the (diffused) internal waves and the
boundary conditions. Currently, no model has been successful in
predicting the temporal coherence time at high frequencies except
for some surface channels where the surface spectrum is known.
The problem is fine and micro-fine ocean processes are not well
understood. Coherence time is a good characteristic of the channel,
but knowing the temporal coherence is not sufficient as far as
channel equalization is concerned. One needs to reproduce the
channel with very small channel estimation error. Currently, no
propagation model has been able to reproduce the CIRs that
agrees with real data. This is the major shortcoming in the model
based approach.
Spatial diversity is controlled by spatial coherence between the
receivers. Vertical coherence length has been measured in a few
experimental [20, 25] and can be explained on a physical basis
[26].
2.5 Doppler Shift and Spread
Acoustic propagation models for a moving source are difficult to
build, when the source motion is not steady as is in real world
scenarios, yielding a time varying Doppler shift and causing a
wider Doppler spread. Frequency-dependent fluctuation rates
occur when different paths have different Doppler shifts [27].
Path dependent Doppler shifts can be estimated from data but are
difficult to remove from the data. Current algorithms
remove/compensate the Doppler-induced phase and temporal
compression/dilatation based on the Doppler shift of the most
dominant path, making channel estimation for Doppler spread
channel more difficult to conduct [27].
2.6 Ambient Noise
Noise is critical for underwater acoustic communications but has
not been systematically studied (except for special cases) as most
effort is focused on characterizing the signal. Impulsive noise
(such as that from snapping shrimps) are often treated as
interference and can be a problem for communications in warm
water in specific frequency bands. The database addresses channel
properties using high SNR data where the estimation error due to
noise is negligible.
2.7 Short Summary
Acoustic channel simulators have been proposed to meet the
increasing need for evaluating the performance of the proposed
schemes over realistic underwater channel conditions. However,
this effort falls short since it has not been able to capture the
temporal variation of the channel impulse responses or temporal
coherence as mentioned above. In addition, acoustic modeling
requires environmental inputs such as sound speed profile and where is known as the forgetting factor. The model based
bottom properties, the former is usually time-varying and both of approach [28] (that will be used to estimate the CIRs for the data
them may be range-dependent. Realistic in-situ information about base) tracks the signal subspace eigenvectors, , i = ,
the sound speed profile as a function of time and range are hard to
and the channel components, zi(n), , together as a function
get and sound speed variations are influenced by many
of time tn= nTg.
oceanographic processes which are hard to model or predict
(forecast) at the scale needed for communication performance
evaluation.
3.1 Tracking the Signal Subspace
Eigenvectors
First, one conducts a coarse estimate of the CIR on a symbol-by-
3. METHODS symbol or fractional symbol basis. For slowly time-varying
Channel tracking involves the estimation and tracking of the time- channels, the signal subspace basis vector
varying CIR from a communication data packet, given either
, can be obtained by eigenvector
training or decision data; for the purpose of this paper the
transmitted (symbol) data are known and treated as training data. decomposition (EVD) of the sample covariance matrix. This
While tracking methods have been widely discussed before, how method can be extended to rapidly time-varying channel by batch
to track the channel variation at the symbol rate is the focus of this eigenvector decomposition (EVD) of the time-varying sample
section. For the communication channel, the received signal can covariance matrices. Such approach is unsuitable for sequential
be written in discrete-time as adaptive processing because it requires repeated EVD, which
involves heavy computations. A sequential adaptive eigenvector
, (1) decomposition (adaptive subspace tracking) method is used here
[29] based on the projection approximation subspace tracking
where x(n) is the received signal at time , (PAST) algorrithm and a more efficient version PASTd [29]. This
denotes the vector of the CIR algorithm has shown a good tradeoff between complexity and
performance and can handle the following two relevant data cases
taps (of dimension N), is the transmitted data vector, and
where the conventional RLS algorithm fail to provide satisfactory
is the AWGN with variance ; the superscript T denotes results: 1) oversampled or correlated data with rank deficient
transpose of a vector, and H denotes Hermition conjugate. The covariance matrix (r << N), and 2) noise-corrupted data where
CIR taps are defined by , where TB signal must be separated from superimposed noise. The details are
given in [27].
= 1/BW is the duration of a symbol, and Tg is the time separation
between CIRs, the inverse of the CIR sampling rate. Applying the
eigenvector analysis, the cross-correlation matrix
3.2 Tracking the Channel Components
The channel component vector is estimated by minimizing
can be expressed as : the weighted sum of the following signal prediction errors:
, (2)
, (5)
where is a orthonormal matrix of
eigenvectors, satisfying with determined from the cross-covariance matrix as
discussed above. For the model-based method, the channel
, and
components follows a state-space model,
is a diagonal matrix of the and are tracked using a Kalman filter [28]. Using Eq. (3), one can
corresponding eigenvalues, in descending order. Expanding the approximate Eq. (1) as , where
CIR in terms of the eigenvectors is the channel component in the
, (3) signal subspace, and is the transmitted data
vector projected on the signal subspace. The channel components
where z ( n ) [ z1 ( n ), z2 ( n ), , z N ( n )]T is a column vector. The evolve with time following a state-space model which can be
coefficients, are referred to as the channel expressed as
components. In underwater acoustic channels, the signal is often Z( n) Z( n 1) N( n)
Z
confined to a small subspace of dimension r << N. This greatly , (6)
x( n) D( n) Z( n) v( n)
simplifies the channel tracking and allows use of more accurate
tracking methods such as Kalman filter.
where , ,
Conventional approach to channel estimation estimates the CIR
, and the state transition matrix is
by minimizing the signal prediction error. For example, using the
RLS algorithm, one estimates the CIR h by minimizing the given by
weighted sum of the signal prediction errors,

, (4) ,
 Table 1. Measured channel properties
Water Range Source Receiver Multi- Signal Duration Spatial Temp.
Depth (m) (km) Depth Depth (m) path Coh. Coh.
(m) Spread ( 0.8) ( 0.8)

UNet06 60-65 3.1 21 29.2-30.91 ~ 10 ms 11s (40k symbols) 0.12 m ~ 20 s

TREX04 70 3.5 40 39.6-41.22 ~ 5 ms 11s (40k symbols) 0.1 m ~ 0.17 -
0.27 s
AUVFest07 20 5 19 17.2-19.2 ~ 5 ms 25s (100k 0.12 m ~ 24 s
Calm Sea symbols)
AUVFest07 20 2.3 19 17.2-19.2 ~ 20 ms 25s (100k 0.08 m ~ 0.08 s
Rough Sea symbols)

where p is the order of the state-space model. The state-transition
coefficients , j p, are determined from an auto-
regressive analysis of the channel covariance matrix and are
tracked as a function of time. The details are given in [30].
4. DATABASE DESCRIPTIONS
To build the database, CIRs will be extracted from experimental
data from as many experiments as possible including both shallow
and deep water. In this section, we describe what should be in the
database and what data we have processed so far. The database
will be available upon request and instructions will be given on
how to use the database to build the received signals
corresponding to the user chosen transmitted signals for the
particular experimental conditions.
The databases are categorized according to the experiments where
the data were collected. The data may be further divided into
subgroups depending on the experimental setup, such as different
band width, different number of receivers (single-input multiple-
output) and different number of sources (multiple-input multiple-
output). Data from fixed source and fixed receivers are analyzed
first. Data from moving sources are deferred to later. For each
data set, the general location of the experiment and the rough time
are given. Also given are the symbol rate (signal bandwidth),
source-receiver range and depths, the typical sound speed profile,
and the bottom depth and bottom properties (when available).
The data analyzed in this section are single carrier signals
transmitted during the 2007 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Festival (AUVFest07) with both calm and rough sea experiments,
the 2006 Underwater Network (UNet06) experiment and the 2004
Time Reversal experiment (TREX04) experiment [20]. Source-
receiver range and depths, water depths for the experiments are
Table 2. Array configuration deployed in Various Experiments.
Depth (m)
given in Table 1. Receiver array configurations are given in Table
2. Binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase-shift
keying (QPSK) signals were transmitted during these experiments
with a carrier frequency centered at 17 kHz, with a bandwidth of
4-5 kHz. The data has high input SNR (20-25 dB) from a fixed
source to a fixed receiver array so that noise and source-receiver
motions are not a factor in the performance analysis.
The AUVFest07 experiment was conducted in 20 m of coast
water under relatively calm and rough sea conditions,
corresponding to sea states of 0 and 3 respectively (based on
observed wave height and the presence/absence of white caps of
breaking waves). The sound speed is nearly a constant for these
environments. The source and receivers were deployed close to
the bottom (1-2 m above the bottom) mounted on a rigid body so
that signal fluctuation due to source or receiver motion is not an
issue. To study the effect of medium inhomogeneities on acoustic
communications, we compare data from the UNet06 experiment
collected in an almost stationary shallow water environment
(protected bay) and the TREX04 which took place on the New
Jersey shelf. These two environments have approximately the
same water depth, and a similar sound speed profile. The sea
surfaces are relatively smooth. The source and receivers are
deployed below the thermocline so that the effect of the surface
waves have minimal effects on sound propagation.
Samples of the data have been analyzed to study the channel
properties, such as the signal (inter and intra-packet) auto-
correlation function, spatial correlation functions the receivers,
individual path statistics etc., and also analyzed to evaluate the
equalizer performance of the correlation-based decision feedback
equalizer. The results have been published. It thus seems natural
to start with these four data sets and offer the CIRs so deduced to
other people for them to test their modulation scheme and their
Distance to the first phone (m)

Number 1 2 3 4 5 6

UNet06 29.02 0.38 0.76 0.98 1.35 1.71

TREX04 39.6 0.31 0.6 0.96 1.31 1.62

AUVFest07 17.2 0.34 0.76 1.06 1.39 1.82

 Figure1. Normalized signal prediction error for the
AUVFest07 calm (upper) and rough (lower) data, based on
CIRs estimated on the time scale of half a symbol.
equalizer performance. The AUVFest07 calm and rough sea data
represent benign and harsh channels in very shallow water, and
the UNet6 data and TREX04 data represents benign and rough
channels in shallow water. They offer good test data for other
researchers to evaluate their communication schemes.
To show the qualities of the CIRs deduced in terms of how well
they reflect the true CIRs, one needs to evaluate the channel
estimation error. Since the true CIRs are not available, one uses
the signal prediction error as a surrogate, defined by as the error
between the received signal and the estimated signal, the latter
calculated based on the convolution of the estimated CIRs with
the transmitted symbols, which can be written as
where and
denotes the true and estimated CIR. Let , and the
normalized channel estimation error be defined by . initial data sets analyzed represent a first attempt for the database.
Figure2. Normalized signal prediction error for the TREX04
(upper) and UNet06 data, based on CIRs estimated on the
time scale of half a symbol.
For high SNR cases (neglecting the noise), one that the
normalized signal prediction error is approximately the same as
the channel estimation, i.e.,
, where
we have assumed that the signal variance is a constant. The
normalized signal prediction error for the AUVFest07, TREX04
and UNet06 data are plotted in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2, respectively,
using the model based subspace approach compared with the
conventional LMS and RLS approach. One sees 10-15 dB
improvement. The results suggest that the estimated CIRs are in
good agreement with the true CIRs on a half-symbol time scale
basis.
While not all data from these experiments have been analyzed, the
The CIRs can be deduced from the rest of the data in due time.
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