Development of a Software-Defined Underwater Acoustic Communication System

Abstract

This report started with a brief history and recent development of underwater acoustic communication systems as well as software-defined radio technologies. Then, some challenges from underwater acoustic channels and available underwater acoustic communication modems are discussed. After finished introducing the basics of SDR and GNU Radio, a detailed description of implementing a software-defined acoustic communication system in GNU Radio are presented, along with some key concepts of the system. Then, some hardware specifications are presented, following by detailed documentation on a software-defined acoustic communication system experiment with a host computer, a USRP, an acoustic hydrophone, and a hydrophone. At the end of Section 4, the results of the experiment are discussed. Lastly, the conclusions of this report are made. Some possible directions for future work are suggested in Section 6