Title: Mitigating the effect of multipath using cross-correlation: application to underwater network cardinality estimation

Authors: M.S. Anower; S.A.H. Chowdhury; J.E. Giti

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh ' Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh ' Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology, Rajshahi-6204, Bangladesh

Abstract: Number of node (cardinality) is an important parameter for a networks proper operation and this parameter can be determined using conventional protocol-based techniques, but these techniques have several limitations in underwater environment due to large propagation latency, high error rate, node mobility, non-negligible capture effect and high path loss. To develop a suitable cardinality estimation technique in presence of unique characteristics of underwater network, a statistical signal processing approach based on cross-correlation of Gaussian signals received at multiple sensors has been proposed in our previous works. In the initial formulation of this approach, a simplified model has been investigated without considering the multipath propagation effect. One of the common challenges for underwater wireless communication is multipath propagation of signals which result in inter-symbol interference (ISI). An important feature of cross-correlation is its ability to mitigate the multipath effect which is demonstrated in this paper and applied to our previously proposed estimation scheme for multipath compensation. It is shown that, due to high dispersion coefficient of the medium, multipath effects on estimation results are negligible and a generalised process of multipath compensation for any dispersion factor is obtained to improve the robustness of this scheme.

Keywords: cardinality estimation; cross-correlation function; CCF; multipath propagation; underwater networks; underwater wireless communications; statistical signal processing; inter-symbol interference.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCC.2016.077404

International Journal of Systems, Control and Communications, 2016 Vol.7 No.3, pp.197 - 220

Received: 22 Sep 2015
Accepted: 04 Jan 2016
Published online: 29 Jun 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article