Spatial diversity equalization for MIMO ocean acoustic communication channels

The available bandwidth of ocean acoustic channels is inherently narrow that impedes high-transmission rate and makes it difficult for multiple users to communicate simultaneously. To alleviate this problem, spatial diversity antennas are used to increase the date rate. In this paper, we employ the spatial diversity equalizers (SDE) to increase the effective channel bandwidth by minimizing the mean-square error (mse). Although joint equalizers have been used in digital telephone subscriber lines to suppress crosstalk, we apply the concept to ocean acoustic channels and show that multiuser communication is possible despite the narrow-channel bandwidth. In addition, we will show that the advantage of SDE is not because we use more taps, but because we collect the data carried through various ocean paths. By applying the saddle point integration method to multiinput multioutput (MIMO) channels, we compute the probability of error (PE) to show that a factor of 3-4 of channel reuse is possible.