Ultrasound can be used as a carrier to realize wireless communication to and from a metal-enclosed space, which has the characteristics such as immunity to the electromagnetic shielding effect and non-destructive penetration of metal obstacles. This paper firstly reviews the previous studies in the field of ultrasonic wireless communication through metal barriers, and summarizes their achievements and the existing problems. Secondly, an overview of the research methods involved in studying the characteristic of acoustic-electric channel is presented, and the principles are introduced for the actual measurement method, equivalent circuit method, ABCD parameter method, finite element analysis method and time-domain finite difference method. Then, an overview of the communication algorithms are presented such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), single-carrier frequency domain equalization and multiple input multiple output OFDM. Finally, the potential future study are proposed in light of the trend of development and unsolved problems.