MC-CDMA via carrier interferometry Codes in an

Underwater Acoustic Channel

Hui Fang Xiaoyi Hu,Ru Xu,Fang Xu

Key Laboratory of Underwater Acoustic Communication and Key Laboratory of Underwater Acoustic Communication and
Marine Information Technology Marine Information Technology
Ministry of Education Ministry of Education
Xiamen, China Xiamen, China
peterpan_23@126.com xyhu@xmu.edu.cn

Abstract—This paper proposes a basic MC-CMDA. via carrier

interferometry Codes(CI codes) in an Underwater
Acoustic(UWA) Channel. Compared with OFDM in UWAC, it
can allow a number of users simultaneously and asynchronously
accessing the UWA channel. A trade off relation exists between
diversity gain and user capacity as well as between spread
spectrum gain and system efficiency. Then diversity combining
scheme is discussed. Both simulation and initial tank experiment
have proved that the proposed scheme is feasible in UWA
channel in a downlink CI/MC-CDMA system.
Keywords- CI/MC-CDMA;Carrier interferometry codes;Diversity
gain;spreading gain;UWA channel
II. ANALYSIS OF CI CODES
The novel spread code adopted in CI/MC-CDMA
termed as CI codes possesses several advantages. Firstly, it
has a better auto-correlation and cross-correlation properties
than traditional non-orthogonal spread code in MC-CDMA, as
shown in Fig.1(a)(b)(c). Morever, different from other
orthogonal spread code, CI codes has no restriction to the
length of code. It has been also proved that the CI/MC-
CDMAs performance matches that of orthogonal MC-CDMA
using Hadamard-Walsh codes[5].

I. INTRODUCTION
As well known ，underwater acoustic (UWA) channel is
one of the most challenging channel with the characteristic of
time-frequency-space variant, narrow available bandwidth,
great transmission loss and strong multipath effect. As a hot
spot, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is
Figure1(a)m sequence auto Figure1(b)m sequence cross-correlation
introduced in UWA channel communication system to combat -correlation
the strong multipath effect and raise the transmission rate.
Meanwhile, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) allows a
number of users simultaneously and asynchronously accessing
the channel over the entire frequency band by modulating and
spreading their information signals with preassigned pseudo-
noise codes. As the increasing need for high data rate,
multiuser communication, covert communication and strong
anti-interference ability in underwater acoustic
communication, Multi-carrier CDMA(MC-CDMA), which is
combined with OFDM and CDMA, has been more and more
studied in underwater acoustic field[1][2][3].
Recently, the principle of interferometry is adopted to
create a novel code set for MC-CDMA based on carrier Figure 1(c) ci sequence cross-correlation feature
interferometry(CI/MC-CDMA)[4][5].The idea here is that
each user simultaneously transmits the N carriers of MC- Secondly, Since CI codes is constructed by shifting
CDMA, with carefully chosen phase offsets that ensure a in the time domain and linearly-increasing phase offsets in the
periodic mainlobe in the time domain. When the frequency domain, the proper selection of shift and offset
superpositioning of one user’s carrier creates a mainlobe in enable CI/MC-CDMA system to provide the added flexibility
the time, all other users are at the times of sidelobe activity. of user access, adding up to N-1 additional users with pseudo
Compared with the traditional MC-CDMA, CI/MC-CDMA is orthogonal positioning on the premise of performance
introduced to achieve higher capacity in UWA channel. guarantee, which makes effective underwater acoustic
network with numerous sensor nodes feasible. Through the
deviation of the formula[5][8], for 2N users on the system,
number 0 to 2N-1,the large set of CI codes is used where the
ith spreading sequence has the general form
{e j 0 , e j1θk ,...e j ( N −1)θk } and
2π
θk = k , k = 0,1,... N − 1 (1)
N
2π π
θk = k + , k = N , N + 1,...2 N − 1 (2)
N N
Where θk is the selection of phase offset，N is code length.
With the choice, orthogonality among N users and pseudo-
orthogonality between first N users and last N users can be
ensured in theory. Also seen in Fig.2.
Figure 2 ci signal and po-ci signal in time domain
Thirdly, reasonable selection of CI codes can make
parallel signal in phase do not overlap at the same time in
order to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)
which receives much concern in multi-carrier communication.
However, CI codes depended on phase offsets is more
sensitive to frequency offset and incoherent distortion, which
may bring multiple access interference (MAI).
III. SYSTEM MODE
In early proposed MC-CDMA, a data symbol is
replicated into N parallel copies .Each branch of parallel
stream is multiplied by a chip of a CI codes of length N. Then
N copies are modulated onto N carriers respectively.
However, High original data rate would lead to severe
frequency selective fading. Hence, in CI/MC-CDMA of the
proposed theme, original data stream is first converted to
some parallel stream, and then every branch performs CI
spreading, which is shown in Fig.3.
The whole system can be described as Fig.4. In
transmitter, the input data is first convolutionally encoded and
interleaved before mapping into a BPSK constellation. Then
the data sequence is converted to parallel and perform CI
spreading. After that, the IFFT is used to implement OFDM
modulation. A cyclic prefix is appended as a guard interval to
the data sequence in order to combat the inter ISI induced by
(Sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation.(NO.60772141))
multipath delay spread in the UWA channel. (Subsequently, a
preamble is added in front of data sequence.) Then, the
complex baseband signal is up-converted to the transmission
frequency and send into the UWA channel after D/A
conversion.
C1j cos(2π f1t )
C2j cos(2π f 2t )
CMj cos(2π f M t )
#
#
# #
#
#
Figure 3 Transmitter Model
UWA channel is simplified as a Rayleigh channel with the
characteristic of time-frequency-variant and multipath[10].
The channel impulse response can be expressed by
L
h (t ,τ ) = ∑ a ( t )δ ( t − τ
i =1
i i ( t )) (3)
Where L presents the number of rays used in the multipath
channel model. ai and τ i are the complex-valued time varying
channel magnitudes and propagation delay of the i th multi-
path.
The equivalent discrete channel transfer function is
L
H ( f ,τ ) = ∑ ai ( n)e − j 2π f τ i ( t ) (4)
i =1
The following simulation experiments are all based on the
channel model above.
In receiver, the signal is down-converted to baseband.
The signal is first OFDM demodulated by the FFT, and then
pilot signal is used to estimate diversity combining weights or
to assist in multiuser detection. The de-spreading is carried out
and the phase constellation of the data is extracted. Finally, the
data is mapped back to the binary form and decoding is
performed.
IV. BASIC PARAMETER SELECTION
A. Length Of Spreading Code
Since we have chosen CI codes as spreading code, the
length of CI codes is naturally taken into consideration. When
the bandwidth and subcarrier spacing are fixed, larger code
length would bring more spreading gain for the system. Due to
the benefit of diffusing the signal energy in the frequency
domain, MC-CDMA can obtain considerable spreading gain.
Fig.4 illustrates the effect of code length to system BER in
AWGN channel.
 Figure 4 CI/MC-CDMA system principle block diagram
However, larger code length means less symbols of serial-
parallel conversion at the same time, namely lower data
transmission rate. Furthermore, from formula (1) above, CI
signal structure is closely relate to code length. With the
increasing code length, the phase offset of CI signal is
becoming smaller and smaller. Fig 5(a)(b).show the influence
of code length to CI signal structure. Maintain of
orthogonality by using time offset would also be frangible to
damage and sensitive to phase variation. Therefore, there is a
tradeoff between spreading gain and data rate concerning code
length.
Figure 4 BER versus SNR between different code length
Figure 5(a) ci signal when code length=8
Figure 5(b) ci signal when code length=16
B. Sub-carrier Number
Sub-carrier number is another point concerned.
Considering the benefit of harnessing the signal energy in the
frequency domain, MC-CDMA can obtain considerable
diversity gain. The degree of diversity gain is partly depended
on the sub-carrier number. On the premise of sub-carrier
orthogonality, carrier spacing is as short as possible in order
to obtain higher frequency efficiency. Guard Interval, which
increases as sub-carrier number rises up, can help combat the
strong multipath effect and Inter symbol Interference (ISI).
However, when coherent bandwidth is much larger than
carrier spacing, effect of frequency gain in[9] can not be
guaranteed. And [10] proves that too large sub-carrier number
do not contribute to system improvement again but increases
system complexity and PAPR. On the contrary, smaller sub-
carrier number means longer carrier spacing and higher
frequency gain. Unfortunately, the higher frequency gain is,
the more orthogonality is destroyed, which leads to serious
multiple access interference (MAI)[10].Hence, There is also a
compromise between Frequency gain and MAI with respect to
sub-carrier number. Comparison between different sub-carrier
numbers is shown in Fig.6.
 Figure 6 BER versus SNR between different sub-carrier number Figure 7(b) BER versus SNR between different combining method
when accessing users is 8

C. Diversity Combining V. TANK EXPERIMENT

Diversity combining is one key technology for MC- After analysis above, the chosen parameters of downlink
CDMA system combating frequency selective fading CI/MC_CDMA system in an UWA Channel is shown in
especially in the downlink. The common method includes Table1.
equal gain combining (EGC),maximal ratio Table1
combining(MRC),orthogonality restoring combining (ORC) System
Parameters Items
and minimum mean square error combining (MMSEC)[11]. Parameters
Different combing methods are contrasted in Fig.7. From System
5KHz
Fig.7(a)(b).,it can be found that MRC performs well only Bandwidth
CI codes
when SNR is low and the number of accessing users is the 8
length
minority and ORC shows better only when SNR is high and
Sub-carrier
the number of accessing users is the majority. But no matter 1024
Number
how many accessing users is and how much SNR is, EGC Sampling
possesses a good BER performance. Synthetically considering 100KHz
Frequency
signal-noise ratio (SNR), maintain of orthogonality of Length Of
spreading code and computational complexity, EGC is first 4096
FFT
chosen for UWA channel with low SNR and multi-user Length Of
environment in underwater acoustic network. 1024
Guard Interval
Modulation
BPSK
Method
Pilot
BLOCK
Type/Interval
Accessing
1～16
users

For the sake of evaluating the performance of downlink

CI/MC-CDMA system, MC-CDMA using Hadamard –Walsh
as spreading code(Walsh/MC-CDMA) is added for
comparison. Its parameters are the same. Meanwhile, in order
to fully reflect the influence of MAI, MRC is used in the
experiment.
A group of experimental data is shown in Table2.

Table2
Experimental
Figure 7(a) BER versus SNR between different combining method Walsh CI
when accessing users is 4 Data
Users num Err num Err num
2 0 0
3 0 0.33
4 0.250 2
5 3.68 3.11
 6 7.69 3.54 Foundation.(NO.60772141).Corresponding author by
7 11.53 4.53 xyhu@xmu.edu.cn.
8 12.99 5.92
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