Abstract: Based on the characteristics of EM multi-path propagation in the marine atmospheric duct and the Markov birth-and-death process in finite space, the path number in the marine atmospheric duct is presented. The excess delay three-parameter model is proposed according to the experimental data with approximate Rayleigh distribution, and the model parameters are determined by the minimum variance criteria. The angles of arrival (AOA) is estimated by the MUSIC algorithm and simulation results show that the MUSIC algorithm can significantly increase the SNR at the AOA. Finally, the multi-eigenpath channel model is proposed for contributing to the system design and performance optimization of the marine microwave communication system.

Key words: atmospheric duct, multi-path channel, path numbers, excess delay, angles of arrival (AOA)