Chirp Based Robust and Low-power Underwater Acoustic Communication With Index Modulation

For underwater acoustic communications ( UWA COMMs), not only severe multi-path bringing serious inter symbol interference (ISI), but also path loss and ambient noise leading to lower effective signalto-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver, make robust UWA COMMs very difficult. In this paper, to overcome ISI and low SNR problems, and achieve robust and low-power UWA COMMs, a novel chirp based UWA COMMs with index modulation (IM) is proposed, called IM-Chirp. From our simulation results and analysis, the proposed IM-Chirp can provide better BER performance than classical chirp systems in severe multi-path and low SNR scenarios.