Water occupies three fourth of earth's surface. The remaining one fourth is land. Although human habitats reside on land, there is no denying of the vital connection between land and water. The future sustainability of human species on this planet depends on wise utilization of all available resources, including that provided by the vast water world. Therefore, it is imperative to explore, understand, and define this massive, varying, and in many areas, unexplored water domain. The water domain exploration and data collection can be conducted using manned or unmanned vehicles, as allowed by the water environment. This dissertation addresses three of the key difficulties that occur during underwater acoustic communication among manned and/or unmanned vehicles and proposes feasible solutions to resolve those difficulties. The focus and the contributions of this research involve the following perspectives: 1) Representation of Underwater Acoustic Communication (UAC) Channels: Providing a comprehensive classification and representation of the underwater acoustic communication channel based on the channel environment. 2) Estimation and Compensation of Doppler Shift: Providing compensation algorithm to mitigate varying Doppler shift effect over subcarriers in UAC Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. 3) Mitigation of Inter-symbol Interference (ISI): Providing feasible solution to long delay spread causing ISI in Ultra-wideband channels.