2019 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC)

Symbol Duration and Adaptive Guard Length for

Underwater Acoustic OFDM Systems
Do Viet Ha∗ , Ho Thanh Trung∗† , Nguyen Van Duc†
∗ Faculty of Electrical-Electronic Engineering, University of Transport and Communications, Hanoi, Vietnam
† School of Electronics and Telecommunications, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
Email:∗ {dovietha@utc.edu.vn, trunght@utc.edu.vn }, † duc.nguyenvan1@hust.edu.vn

Abstract— This paper focuses on determining the appropriate
symbol duration and adaptive guard length for the orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system using the chan-
nel modeling which is derived from the measurement data of the
real underwater acoustic (UWA) channel. Especially, the guard
length is not fixed as conventional UWA-OFDM systems but
adapted to the SNR of the UWA-OFDM system which helps
reduce losses in signal energy and spectral efficiency caused
by adding guard length. The system has been investigated for
different lengths of not only the symbol duration but also the
guard length time. For the given system bandwidth of 8 kHz
of the considered UWA-OFDM system, the optimal number of
subcarriers is specified as 1024 that means the symbol duration
of 128 ms. The results of guard length determination are G of
50, 150, 250, and 268 for the SNRs of 20 dB, 25 dB, 30 dB, and
35 dB, respectively. It can be seen that the lower level of SNR
is, the shorter length of CP is.These optimal results of symbol
duration and guard length are useful for improvements in UWA-
OFDM system capacity and performance.
Index Terms—Underwater Acoustic Channel Modeling, OFDM
Systems, Guard Length, Symbol Duration
I. I NTRODUCTION
The inter-symbol interference (ISI), as the result of
multi-path fading, degrades the performance of orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Inserting
guard time length is one of the popular solutions to overcome
the ISI effect; however, it causes losses in the power and spec-
tral efficiency of the system [1]. In OFDM systems, the guard
length is normally estimated by the maximum delay spread
of channels [2]. For underwater acoustic (UWA) channels, the
low speed of sound in water causes a large delay spread [3] and
thus a large guard length that makes the loss high. Therefore,
the need for determining the appropriate guard length, which
not only mitigate the ISI effect but also reduce the high loss,
has become obvious for underwater applications.
A cyclic prefix (CP) or zero padding (ZP) can be used as
guard carries in UWA-OFDM systems. The guard length is
usually fixed and chosen as larger than maximum delay spread,
such that the ISI effect resulting from multipath reflection
of UWA channels can be eliminated [4]–[7]. In [6], the CP
needs to be longer than the largest expected channel delay
spread of about 40 ms. The authors in [5] study the capacity
of OFDM system over the UWA channel with assuming the
guard interval be equal to the maximum channel delay spread
of 1 ms and 5 ms for the AR-1 model and the uniform model,
respectively. Similarly, the Bellhop model is used in [7] and
the maximum delay of the multipath arrivals is assumed to
be 30 ms; thus the cyclic prefix length of 50 ms is chosen.
The authors in [4] use a simple two-ray uniform power delay
profile with a maximum delay spread of 2 ms and then a
cyclic prefix of duration 5 ms is chosen to eliminate ISI.
However, due to a lack of standard UWA channel model, the
maximum delay spread should be considered for particular
UWA channels [3]. For example, it can be retrieved from the
measurement data of the real UWA channel. Moreover, the
fixed and large guard length to compensate for the ISI effect
causes a high power loss that may make the noise effect more
severe. For the case of low transmit power, the UWA-OFDM
system performance may be degraded by this high loss.
In UWA-OFDM systems, the symbol duration, which is
defined by Tu = N/B, where B and N denote the system
bandwidth and the number of subcarriers, respectively, also
has a strong effect on the spectral efficiency of UWA-OFDM
systems [2]. The large symbol duration makes the spectral effi-
ciency increase; however, it may make large channel variations
in the OFDM symbol causing the inter-channel-interference
(ICI) effect that destroys the orthogonality between subcarriers
and degrades the UWA-OFDM system performance. Thus,
the symbol duration is normally chosen as smaller than the
channel coherence time, which depends on the maximum
Doppler frequency of the UWA channel, to combat the ICI
effect [2]. On the other hand, the symbol duration is selected
as greater than several times of the guard interval to achieve
a reasonable spectral efficiency [4]–[6]. However, the large
symbol duration will lead to a difficulty in the synchronization
at the receiver; especially, for UWA-OFDM systems, where the
Doppler effect can not be neglect and completely compensated
[8]. In summary, there is lack of research studies that consid-
ered the symbol duration by the ICI effect in combination with
the effect on spectral efficiency.
In this paper, we focus on determining the appropriate
symbol duration and guard length for the UWA-OFDM system
to not only achieve a good performance of the considered
system but also limit the unnecessary losses of power and
spectral efficiency. The channel modeling is derived from the
UWA measurement data which is carried out in June 2017 in
West Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam. Therefore, the maximum delay
spread is retrieved from the measurement data of the real UWA
channel. The guard length is determined to adapt to the SNR
of the UWA-OFDM system, which has been investigated for

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 2019 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC)

different lengths of not only the symbol duration but also the
guard interval. For the considered UWA-OFDM system, it is
found that the symbol duration of 128 ms is optimal to get
a reasonable trade-off between the system quality (i.e. BER
results) and the spectral efficiency. The guard length has been
determined and adapted to different SNR levels of the UWA-
OFDM system. The optimal CP lengths are G of 50, 150, 250,
and 268 for the SNRs of 20 dB, 25 dB, 30 dB, and 35 dB,
respectively. The results show that the lower SNR is, the
optimal guard length is shorter.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows, in Sect. II, the
development of measurement-based UWA channel modeling is
described. The UWA-OFDM system is analyzed in Sect. III.
Section IV shows the numerical results. Finally, Sect. V draws Fig. 2. The measurement system
conclusions.

II. M EASUREMENT-BASED UWA C HANNEL M ODELING
The UWA measurement-based channel is designed through
steps that are illustrated in Fig 1. The reference model is
derived from the UWA channel measurement data. Then, a
simulation model should be selected so that it can describe
well the reference model. By applying a computation method,
the channel parameters of the simulation model including
path gains, propagation delays, and Doppler frequencies are
estimated.
.FBTVSFNFOU

EBUB
In the delay domain, the resolution is τ = 0.25 ms with the
samples of N = 140. Hence, the obtained TVCIR ĥ [τl , tm ]
has tm = mt for m = 0, 1, ..., (M − 1), and τl = lτ for
l = 0, 1, ..., (L − 1).
B. Simulation model
To create a measurement-based UWA channel model, we
have to select a suitable simulation model that can describe
well the measured UWA channel. For the sophisticated case
such as the shallow UWA channel, the wideband sum-of-
cisoids uncorrelated scattering (SOCUS) channel simulation
model is usually used [10]. The TVCIR h (τ, t) of the simu-
lation model is given by [11]

L−1 Nl
h (τ, t) = cn,l ej(2πfn,l t+θn,l ) δ (τ − τl ) , (1)
l=0 n=1

where L is the number of propagation paths having different

Fig. 1. Method of designing the measurement-based channel simulator
A. Reference Model developed from Measurement data
The measurement was carried out in June 2017 in West
Lake, Hanoi, Vietnam, which is a shallow water environment.
The averaged depth is 10 meters and the distance between
transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) is 100 m. The measurement
campaign is presented in Fig.2. To measure the time-variant
delay spread τl , these parameters will be retrieved from
the measured TVCIR ĥ [τl , tm ]. The symbol Nl denotes the
number of paths experiencing the same delay spread where
each nth path has the path gain cn,l , the Doppler frequency
fn,l , and the phase shift θn,l .
For the purpose of determining the simulation channel
parameters {Nl , cn,l , fn,l , θn,l }, we use the time-complex
channel gain μl (t) which is expressed by

Nl

channel impulse response (TVCIR) of the real UWA chan- μl (t) = cn,l ej(2πfn,l t+θn,l ) . (2)
n=1
nel, we use a pseudo-noise sequence PN(t), which has the
generator polynomial G(x) = x10 + x7 + 1, as the channel C. Channel Parameter Estimation
sounding signal. The transmitter periodically generates the The set of parameters {Nl , cn,l , fn,l , θn,l } need to be deter-
PN sequences during the measurement time Tmes with the mined to fit the statistical properties of the channel simulation
period of Δt = 0.5 s. Then, they are modulated, amplified model with those of the measured UWA channel. Using the
and sent via the transducer. At the receiver side, the signal optimization algorithm called Lp-norm method [12], the set
is passed through a low noise amplifier (LNA), demodulated of the parameters will be estimated in L steps by minimizing
and processed by the algorithm proposed in [9]. As a result, the following cost function
we obtain the TVCIR of the measured UWA channel ĥ (τ, t),
⎡ tmax
⎤ p1
where τ and t denote propagation delay and observation time
⎣ 1
variables, respectively. Figure 2 shows the TVCIR ĥ (τ, t) that minimize |μl (t) − μ̂l (t)|p dt⎦ , (3)
was measured for Tmes = 7.5 s during M = TΔt mes
= 5 samples. {Nl , cn,l , fn,l , θn,l } tmax
0

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 2019 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC)

Measured CIR

1
Normalized CIR |h(τ,t)|2

0.8

0.6 3

0.4 2

t (s)
0.2 1 Fig. 4. Block diagram of OFDM system.
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
τ (ms) last part of OFDM symbol and appended in the front of the
Simulated CIR transmitted OFDM symbol as shown in Fig.5.

1
Normalized |h(τ,t)|2

0.8
3 &3 Tu+TCP
0.6
2
0.4 Fig. 5. Cyclic prefix in OFDM symbol.
t (s)

0.2 1

0
0 5 10 15 20 25
τ (ms)
Fig. 3. TV-CIR comparison.
where μ̂l (t) denotes the lth channel gain of measured TVCIR
ĥ (τl , t) at τ = τl .
D. Channel Modeling Result
To confirm the exactness of the simulation model, we
compare the measured TVCIR ĥ (τ, t) to the simulation
one h (τ, t). Substituting the estimated set of parameters
{Nl , cn,l , fn,l , θn,l } to Eq. 1, the simulation TVCIR h (τ, t)
is computed.Figure 2 shows the TVCIR of simulation model in
comparison with that of the reference model. We can see that
the simulation model closes to the reference model; therefore,
we can use the simulation model to analyze the performance
of the UWA-OFDM system.
III. UWA-OFDM S YSTEM
A. System Description
Figure 4 shows a theoretical UWA- OFDM system by using
the measurement-based UWA channel model presented in the
previous section. The guard carries in UWA-OFDM system
can be cyclic prefix (CP) or zero padding (ZP). In practice,
the empty guard time (i.e. ZP) introduces the ICI effect that
makes subcarriers are no longer orthogonal to each other [2].
As aforementioned, it is difficult to compensate for the ICI in
UWA-OFDM systems due to the Doppler effect causing by
the relative Tx/Rx or the water surface movement. Thus, we
use cyclic prefix (CP) as guard carries, which is a copy of the
B. Symbol Duration and Cyclic Prefix Length
0
30 35 For OFDM systems, the useful symbol length is Tu = N B,
where B and N denote the system bandwidth and the number
of subcarriers, respectively. The cyclic prefix length (CP) is
defined as TCP = G×T N
u
that results in the total OFDM symbol
length of Ts = Tu + TCP .
The value of G should be chosen carefully in order to
find the suitable ratio between TCP and Tu . Furthermore, for
OFDM system design, both TCP and Tu should be considered
thoroughly.
• The large symbol duration Tu make the spectral efficiency
increase; however, it may make the channel variations
(i.e. the ICI effect) be more serious. To combat the ICI
effect in UWA-OFDM system, the symbol duration Tu
should be smaller than the channel coherence time Tc ,
which depends on the maximum Doppler frequency of
the UWA channel.
• The guard interval TCP should be larger than the max-
imum delay spread τmax to mitigate the ISI causing by
the multipath fading of the UWA channel. On the other
hand, a higher spectral efficiency could be achieved with
a small TCP .
By inserting the guard length TCP , the signal energy and
the data rate of OFDM systems will be lost because the
guard subcarriers carry no information. The SNR loss and the
data rate of CP-OFDM systems will be computed in below
subsections
1) SNR Loss: The power efficiency degrees when increas-
ing the guard length to combat the ISI. This results in the SNR
loss at the transmitter side, which is given by:

TCP
SNRloss = −10 log10 1 − . (4)
TCP + Tu

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 2019 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC)
Thus, to limit the energy loss, one should chose the longer
symbol duration Tu as well as the shorter guard length TCP .
2) Data Rate: Assuming that the coding rate is r, the
overall data rate of the UWA-OFDM in bits per second can
be computed as
rKd log2 M
R= , (5)
Tu + TCP
where Kd and M denote the number of data subcarriers and
the size of the constellation for mapping information bits into
symbols, respectively. Using this equation, it can be found
that the high data rate will be achieved with the higher ratio
of Kd /(Tu + TCP ). Therefore, the parameters Tu and TCP
should be considered carefully to obtain the high data rate
and minimize the SNR loss.
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
A. Setting Parameters
The UWA channel measurement was carried out at the
center carrier frequency fc = 12 kHz and the signal bandwidth
B = 8 kHz; thus, they are used as the primitive parameters for
the UWA-OFDM system simulation. For the fixed bandwidth
B, the UWA-OFDM system will be investigated with different
number of subcarriers Nc to determine the optimal symbol
duration Tu = N
B.
TABLE I
S YSTEM SPECIFICATION
Parameters Value
Center carrier frequency fc 12 kHz
System bandwidth B 8 kHz
Number of subcarriers N 512, 1024, 2048
Useful symbol time Tu Variable
Cyclic prefix time TCP Variable
Modulation scheme QPSK
B. Number of Subcarries Determination
The UWA-OFDM system performance is evaluated for
different number of subcarriers Nc = 512, 1024, 2048
corresponding to the useful symbol duration Tu =
64 ms, 128 ms, 256 ms, respectively.
As the result of measured TVCIR which is shown in. Fig. 2,
the maximal delay spread of the UWA channel is specified as
τmax = 35 ms. Therefore, to mitigate the ISI effect, we set the
guard length of TCP = τmax that means the number of guard
carriers of G = 280 for the UWA-OFDM system simulation.
The number of pilot carriers is selected as a quarter of Nc as
a lot of UWA-OFDM experiments. Thus, they are 128, 256,
and 512 for the cases Nc of 512, 1024, and 2048, respectively.
Figure 6 shows the bit error rate (BER) of the UWA-
OFDM system for different number of subcarriers Nc =
512, 1024, 2048 with the number of guard subcarriers of
G = 280. As can be seen, the system performance for the
case of Nc = 1024 is significantly better than the case of
Nc = 512. That is because the SNR loss of 1.05 dB (for
Nc = 1024) is lower than that of 1.89 dB (for Nc = 512).
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-1 Nc=512
10
Nc=1024
Nc=2048
10
-2
BER
10-3
-4
10
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
SNR(dB)
Fig. 6. BER versus SNR for different guard length.
However, if increasing Nc to 2048, the system performance
is almost unchanged in comparison with that of Nc = 1024
even it has the lowest SNR loss of 0.56 dB. The reason is that
a large number of subcarrier of Nc = 2048 makes the long
symbol duration Tu = 256 ms; thus, the ICI effect on the UWA
channel is more serious. Consequently, the BER result could
not be improved if increasing the number of subcarriers from
1024 to 2048. Furthermore, the synchronization at the receiver
side will be extremely difficult if the number of subcarriers
is large [2]. In conclusion, for the considered UWA-OFDM
system, the optimal number of subcarriers is Nc = 1024 that
can achieve a good UWA-OFDM system performance and still
limit the ICI effect.
C. CP length Determination
In this section, we evaluated the UWA-OFDM system
performance under different CP lengths, which vary from 50
to 280. The result in Fig.7 shows that the BER decreases
proportionally with the increase of CP length for the high
value of SNR, which is greater than 20 dB. The higher SNR
is, the more improvement of BER can be obtained when
increasing the CP length. This is because the higher SNR can
compensate well for the SNR loss due to inserting the CP for
combating the ISI effect that can improve the UWA-OFDM
system performance. On the contrary, for the SNR less than
20 dB, the longer CP cannot make a decrease in the BER
results. The low SNR in combination with the high SNR loss
by adding CP can make the desired signal power low level;
thus, the UWA-OFDM system performance is dominated by
noise effect. Consequently, increasing the CP length to reduce
the ISI effect cannot overcome the noise effect. As a result,
the system performance is almost unchanged for different CP
length if the SNR is less than 20 dB.
From the above results and analysis, we evaluate the BER of
the UWA-OFDM system versus CP lengths for different SNR
of 20 dB, 25 dB, 30 dB, and 35 dB. As the result shown in
Fig.8, we can determine the optimal CP length for each SNR
level, at which the BER is minimized and kept unchanged even
 2019 International Conference on Advanced Technologies for Communications (ATC)

TABLE II
R ESULTS OF C YCLIC PREFIX LENGTH FOR THE UWA-OFDM SYSTEM
CP=280
10-1 CP=230
SNR [dB] G Loss [dB] Rate [kb/s] BER
20 50 0.22 10.01 4.3E-3
CP=205 25 150 0.69 9.16 1.3E-3
CP=154 30 250 1.21 8.44 3.7E-4
10-2 CP=50 35 268 1.32 8.32 1.2E-4
BER

Effects of both the useful symbol duration and the CP length

-3 are investigated. The optimal symbol duration is determined by
10
Tu = 256 ms (i.e. the number of subcarriers Nc = 1024) for
the considered UWA-OFDM system with the fixed bandwidth
of B = 8 kHz. The results of optimal CP length determination
10-4 proved that the CP length is strongly dependent on the SNR
level of the UWA-OFDM system. The lower level of SNR is,
the CP length is shorter. Increasing the CP length greater than
0 10 20 30
its optimal value could not give an increase on the system
SNR (dB) performance but may cause an unnecessary power loss.
Fig. 7. BER versus SNR for different guard length. Acknowledgement
This study was funded by the Vietnam National Founda-
tion for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED)
10-2 under the project number 102.04-2018.12
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SNR = 40dB
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SNR = 30dB
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10-4
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CP length
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increasing CP length. The detail of obtained results including
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V. C ONCLUSIONS
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