Model-Driven Deep-Learning-Based Underwater Acoustic OTFS Channel Estimation

Accurate channel estimation is the fundamental requirement for recovering underwater acoustic orthogonal time–frequency space (OTFS) modulation signals. As the Doppler effect in the underwater acoustic channel is much more severe than that in the radio channel, the channel information usually cannot strictly meet the compressed sensing sparsity assumption in the orthogonal matching pursuit channel estimation algorithm. This deviation ultimately leads to a degradation in system performance. This paper proposes a novel approach for OTFS channel estimation in underwater acoustic communications, utilizing a model-driven deep learning technique. Our method incorporates a residual neural network into the OTFS channel estimation process. Specifically, the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm and denoising convolutional neural network (DnCNN) collaborate to perform channel estimation. The cascaded DnCNN denoises the preliminary channel estimation results generated by the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm for more accurate OTFS channel estimation results. The use of a lightweight DnCNN network with a single residual block reduces computational complexity while still preserving the accuracy of the neural network. Through extensive evaluations conducted on simulated and experimental underwater acoustic channels, the outcomes demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms traditional threshold-based and orthogonal matching pursuit channel estimation techniques, achieves superior accuracy in channel estimation, and significantly reduces the system’s bit error rate.