Chirp Slope Keying: A Practical Benchmark Modulation Scheme for Underwater Acoustic Channel Replay Simulation

Performance bench-marking of underwater acoustic modems manufactured by various vendors are not straightforward due to the unavailability of standard channel models for Underwater Wireless Acoustic channels (UWA). Recognizing the difficulty for accurately modeling the UWA channels, channel replay simulation is often resorted to as a realistic simulation strategy. In this approach, Time-Varying Impulse Response (TVIR) of the channel is measured continuously for a duration using channel sounding technique. Such databases are created for benchmark sites and the recorded channel TVIR are used for channel replay simulation. One such database of TVIR developed by Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) is named as underWater AcousTic channEl Replay benchMARK (WATERMARK) is adopted by many authors as a benchmarking tool for acoustic modem physical layer technologies. Popular modulation in communication literature (such as BPSK and QPSK etc.) will not work in UWA channels without the support of additional processing blocks such as complex adaptive equalizers, synchronization schemes, and Doppler compensation techniques due to the double-spread and wide-band characteristics of UWA channels. In this paper, we have demonstrated Chirp Slope Keying (CSK) as a simple and robust modulation scheme which will work on almost all UWA channels encountered in practice by suitably choosing the data rate, without the support of additional processing blocks such as complex adaptive equalizers, synchronization schemes and Doppler compensation techniques. Hence CSK provides a "practical performance benchmark for channel replay simulation"against which the performance of other advanced physical layer schemes can be compared.