Decision-directed passive phase conjugation for underwater acoustic communications with results from a shallow-water trial

We describe a novel decision-directed structure that extends the passive phase conjugation (PPC) array demodulation method of Rouseff et al.. The PPC transmission scheme is a single source and multiple receive sensors. Our algorithm uses an initial training period with known data, followed by block-update LS channel estimation via LSQR (Paige and Saunders1982) iterations, and subsequent memoryless decisions. Decisions are circulated back into the LS model for the next estimation block. Performance on a shallow-water acoustic channel is shown at ranges up to 4.6 km under windy surface conditions and shipping noise. The algorithm demonstrates good bit error rates, and robustly tracks time-varying channels. Its unquantized output can be further processed by conventional equalizers.