Communication through multi-layered acoustic electric channels
Authors
Chakraborty, Soumya
Issue Date
2015-08
Type
Thesis
Electronic thesis
Electronic thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Electrical engineering
Alternative Title
Abstract
Single layered acoustic-electric channels have been used in the recent past to send
power and data through metallic barriers wirelessly. These penetration-free solutions
are valuable for maintaining the structural integrity while providing needed connec-
tivity. Most of the previous work has considered single-layered channels, though
in many applications one will encounter multi-layered channels that include one or
more metallic barriers and fluid layers like water etc. This work presents communi-
cation schemes that can be used to send data through such multi-layered acoustic-
electric channels. First, the measured characteristics of several multi-layered acous-
tic electric channels are presented and modeled, including those consisting water
sandwiched between steel plates and concentric pipes as well as those that extend
axially along a steel pipe. The channels are found to be very frequency selective.
Second, low data rate, low complexity communication techniques are developed for
these channels. Chirp-FSK and Chirp-OOK with non-coherent detection are studied
through theoretical analysis and Monte-Carlo simulations using measured channel
data. Chirp-OOK with energy detection is found to provide a good compromise be-
tween performance and implementation simplicity. Hardware implementations are
designed, constructed and tested on the actual channels. A standalone embedded
design of the communication link is used to send at a rate of 100 bps using 5 mW of
transmit power. Lastly, communication schemes to send data at higher rates (tens of
kbps) through such multi-layered channels are considered. One such scheme, using
a Decision Feedback Equalizer with 16-QAM modulation is found to be effective for
one of the channels.
Description
August 2015
School of Engineering
School of Engineering
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY