Multi-carrier synthetic aperture communication in shallow water: experimental results.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communications in the presence of motion is investigated using data collected from the Kauai Acomms MURI 2008 (KAM08) experiment, conducted off the western side of Kauai, Hawaii, in June-July 2008. The experiment involved a vertical array moored in 106 m deep shallow water and a source towed at a speed of 3 knots at ranges between 600 m and 6 km. In order to attain reliable communications with only a single receive element, a synthetic aperture approach is applied. After combining multiple transmissions, an error-free reception is achieved with a low-density parity-check code, confirming the feasibility of coherent synthetic aperture communications using OFDM.