Modern modulation methods for underwater communication

Abstract

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is being considered for communication over wireless (acoustic) underwater channels. This paper is a study about OFDM modulation for underwater communication system. Study of the theory of OFDM modulation is explained, and a basic simulation was made for the modulator and demodulator structure in MATLAB environment as a study experiment for modern modulation method for underwater communication systems. The symbol-error-ratio (SER) is considered as the main parameter. The simulation is performed as an SNR (signal-to-noise-ratio) versus SER comparison for transmission and reception of modulated signals. OFDM block size is changed in the simulation later to realize the behavior for transmission and reception of modulated signals and to find out how error rate changes based on the size of OFDM block size.