Time reversal communication in a time-varying sparse channel

Recently time reversal (TR) communications has been extended to time-varying channels. The basic idea is to implement it on a block-by-block basis such that within each block the channel remains time-invariant and subsequently is updated using detected symbols (decision-directed mode). Using experimental data (12-20 kHz) collected in shallow water, this letter investigates three different block-based TR approaches: (1) without explicit phase tracking, (2) with phase tracking, and (3) exploiting channel sparsity. The TR approaches then are compared to a conventional adaptive multichannel equalizer. It is found that approach (3) generally provides the best performance and robustness. (C) 2011 Acoustical Society of America