• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.45-49
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• 2016

The performance of underwater acoustic communication systems is sensitive to inter-symbol interference caused by delay spread developed from multipath signal propagation. The multipath nature of underwater channels causes signal distortion and error floor. In order to improve the performance, it is necessary to employ an iterative coding scheme. Of the various iterative coding schemes, turbo code and convolutional code based on the BCJR algorithm have recently dominated this application. In this study, the performance of iterative codes based on turbo equalizers with equivalent coding rates and similar code word lengths were analyzed. Underwater acoustic communication system experiments using these two coding techniques were conducted on Kyeong-chun Lake in Munkyeong City. The distance between the transmitter and receiver was 400 m, and the data transfer rate was 1 Kbps. The experimental results revealed that the performance of turbo codes is better for channeling than that of convolutional codes that use a BCJR decoding algorithm.