title: Time-reversal processing for an acoustic communications experiment in a highly reverberant environment.
abstract: Time-reversal (T/R) communications is a new application area motivated by the recent advances in T/R theory. Although perceived by many in signal processing as simply an application of matched-filter theory, a T/R receiver offers an interesting solution to the communications problem for a reverberant channel. In this paper, the performance of various realizations of the T/R receiver for an acoustic communications experiment in air is described along with its associated processing. The experiment is developed to evaluate the performance of point-to-point T/R receivers designed to extract a transmitted information sequence propagating in a highly reverberant environment. It is demonstrated that T/R receivers are capable of extracting the transmitted coded sequence from noisy microphone sensor measurements with zero-symbol error. The processing required to validate these experimental results is discussed. These results are also compared with those produced by an equivalent linear equalizer or inverse filter, which provides the optimal solution when it incorporates all of the reverberations.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, Livermore, California 94551, USA. candy1@llnl.gov
authors.forename: James V
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Candy
authors.forename: Alan W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Poggio
authors.forename: Brian L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Guidry
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000465:Algorithms; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013997:Time Factors