Bio-inspired underwater acoustic communication using stochastic jitter waveform codebook signaling

Whistle-contour-based underwater acoustic communication reduces the structural recognizability of artificial modulation by using marine-mammal-like whistle contours as acoustic carriers. However, existing whale whistle-based communication methods typically embed conventional modulation waveforms into whistle time–frequency curves, resulting in repetitive or constrained local frequency variations that may be recognized by structural feature-based detectors. To address this limitation, a waveform-codebook signaling method based on stochastic jitter segments is proposed. In the proposed method, an envelope-modulated stochastic generator is used to produce controllable low-frequency jitter-like waveform segments, and a low-correlation codebook is constructed by correlation screening. During transmission, each information symbol is represented by selecting a complete jitter waveform from the codebook, rather than by changing a deterministic frequency or slope parameter. Matched filtering is employed at the receiver for symbol detection. Simulation and sea-experiment results evaluate the communication performance of the proposed waveform-codebook signaling method, and controlled recognition tests are used to compare its structural recognizability with selected whistle-based parameter-modulation baselines. The results show that, within the adopted whistle-based signaling framework and recognition-test protocol, the proposed method reduces deterministic local modulation structures while maintaining reliable matched-filter-based communication performance.