Limitations of WSSUS modeling of stationary underwater acoustic communication channel

Performances of underwater acoustic communication (UAC) systems are strongly related to specific propagation conditions of the underwater channel. Due to their large variability, there is a need for adaptive matching of the UAC systems signaling to the transmission properties of the channel. This requires a knowledge of instantaneous channel characteristics, in terms of the specific parameters of stochastic models. The wide-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (WSSUS) assumption simplifies the estimation of terrestrial wireless channel transmission properties. Although UAC channels are hardly ever WSSUS, the rationale of such a stochastic modeling is that over a short period of time, and for a limited frequency range, this assumption is reasonably satisfied. The limits of application of the local-sense stationary uncorrelated scattering (LSSUS) model are determined by the stationary time and frequency. This paper presents the results of LSSUS model analysis for UAC channel measurements gathered by the former Research Department for Underwater Acoustics and Marine Geophysics (FWG), now part of the WTD71, during the SIMO experiment in the Bornholm Basin of the Baltic Sea.