Underwater Acoustic Signal Acquisition and Sensing Using a Ring Vector Sensor Communication Receiver: Theory and Experiments

Signal acquisition and sensing in underwater systems and applications is typically a challenging issue due to the small signal strength within the background noise. Here, we present a ring vector sensor communication receiver that can significantly improve signal acquisition, by utilizing the underwater acoustic vector field components, compared to the scalar component. The vector sensor receiver is a multichannel receiver that measures particle velocities, which are vector components of the underwater acoustic field, in addition to the scalar field component. According to the combination of our measured experimental data with our signal acquisition performance analysis, the introduced ring vector sensor receiver exhibits higher signal acquisition probabilities for the vector components compared to the scalar component. This can be attributed to certain characteristics of the vector field components. Another advantage of this multichannel receiver is that combining all of its channels can further increase the signal acquisition and packet detection probability in underwater communication systems compared to a single-channel approach.