Impact of Climatic Conditions to Capacity of Airborne Ultrasonic Channel

In this paper, we estimate the upper limit of the transmission data rate in airborne ultrasonic communications, under condition of the optimal power allocation. The presented method is based on frequency response of a channel in case of single-path LOS propagation under different climatic conditions and AWGN background noise model, and it can be easily extended to the case of frequency-dependent noise. The obtained results go beyond the discrete distances for which experimental SNR values were available, and are more accurate than the previous calculations in the literature, due to the inclusion of the channel frequency response and its changes over the distance. The impact of air temperature, relative humidity and the atmospheric pressure on the channel capacity is also investigated. The presented results can serve as a reference during the design of airborne ultrasonic communication systems operating in the far-field region.