Empirical characterization of the Translational acoustic-RF communication channel

Translational acoustic-radio frequency (TARF) communication paves the way for translating information from an underwater acoustic signal to the over-the-air (OTA) electromagnetic receiver through the medium interface. The study and characterization of the channel is essential for establishing a reliable communication link. Although channel modeling has been extensively studied for OTA and underwater channels, the amplitude characteristics of the TARF cross-medium channel have not been investigated in comparison with well-known distributions to date. In this work, we first refine the signal model to incorporate the effects of the wavefront-water surface interactions. With the help of numerical and graphical methods, we then attempt to characterize the cross-medium channel with empirical data using existing models developed for OTA and underwater channels. We further evaluate channel linearity and time invariance empirically. Observations from these studies over multiple experiments are detailed with additional discussions that enable better channel characterization to develop reliable and consistent cross-medium TARF communication in challenging scenarios.