Experimental Measurements and Analysis of In-Band Full-Duplex Interference for Underwater Acoustic Communication Systems

This paper investigates the characteristics of the self-interference (SI) channel in an underwater acoustic communications (UAC) system operating under the Full-Duplex (FD) mode of operation. The theoretical doubling of throughput offered by FD operation is particularly attractive in UAC systems due to the severely band-limited nature of the channels encountered. Experimental measurements are presented for a shallow-water environment for a number of selected SI channel geometries, signal formats and receiver configurations. Presented results are comprised of channel impulse responses extracted by means of correlation processing of chirp-based channel soundings. Based on the measurements, the SI channel is characterised and modeled, an important step towards understanding the challenges involved in realising a practical UAC system capable of FD operation.