Realistic modeling of underwater ambient noise and its influence on spread-spectrum signals

Ocean noise is a complex phenomenon in underwater environments. Different processes such as shipping traffic, wind, rain or animals contribute with a different signature to the background noise, which can worsen underwater systems performance. However, in the simulation of underwater systems the common approach is to consider an additive white Gaussian noise with a certain given value. Usually, the different spectrum behavior or the possible non-Gaussian nature of the noise is not considered, neither its variability with regards to the environmental conditions such as wind or rain. In this work, a realistic ambient noise environment is presented, where wind and rain have been considered as the noise sources. In order to test the influence of this noise model, a statistical study of the detection of a coded signal in a noisy environment has been conducted, where different values of wind speed and rain rates will be taken into account. The results show that the performance of the system can vary considerably with the environmental conditions.