Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding for Underwater Acoustic Communications

This paper presents a performance evaluation of the Ordered Reliability Bits Guessing Random Additive Noise Decoding (ORBGRAND) decoder in the context of underwater acoustic communications. Utilizing an underwater acoustic channel replay emulator, an ongoing initiative aimed at creating a universally accessible repository of underwater acoustic communication channels, we assess the performance of the ORBGRAND decoder. The ORBGRAND decoder demonstrates exceptional performance, achieving an approximately 8 dB gain with only 8-bit parity check bits (a code rate of 0.94) when compared with an uncoded system and a 1 dB gain when compared with Polar codes using state-of-the-art decoders, while maintaining an effective throughput of approximately 3 kbps over a 4 kHz acoustic band. This performance is achieved with minimal throughput penalty and remarkably low computational complexity compared to traditional decoders. These findings underscore the potential of the ORBGRAND decoder for efficient and robust underwater acoustic communication.