Acoustic underwater communication systems designed to work reliably in shallow coastal waters must overcome major limitations such as multipath propagation and the Doppler effect. These restrictions are the reason for the complexity of receivers being built, whose task is to decode a symbol on the basis of the received signal. Additional complications are caused by the low propagation speed of the acoustic wave in the water and...

Underwater acoustic communication (UAC) system designers tend to transmit as much information as possible, per unit of time, at as low as possible error rate. However, the bit rate achieved in UAC systems is much lower than for wire or radio-communication systems. This is due to disadvantageous properties of the UAC channels, namely the sea and inland waters. Estimation of UAC channel transmission properties is possible within...

A signal transmitted in an Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) system operating in a shallow-water channel suffers from strong time dispersion due to multipath propagation. This causes the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) observed in the received signal, which significantly limits the communication system’s reliability and transmission rate. In such propagation conditions, the Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) method is...