Underwater optical wireless communication network
- 1 January 2010
- journal article
- Published by SPIE-Intl Soc Optical Eng in Optical Engineering
- Vol. 49 (1), 015001-015001-6
- https://doi.org/10.1117/1.3280288
Abstract
The growing need for underwater observation and subsea monitoring systems has stimulated considerable interest in advancing the enabling technologies of underwater wireless communication and underwater sensor networks. This communication technology is expected to play an important role in investigating climate change, in monitoring biological, biogeochemical, evolutionary, and ecological changes in the sea, ocean, and lake environments, and in helping to control and maintain oil production facilities and harbors using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), submarines, ships, buoys, and divers. However, the present technology of underwater acoustic communication cannot provide the high data rate required to investigate and monitor these environments and facilities. Optical wireless communication has been proposed as the best alternative to meet this challenge. Models are presented for three kinds of optical wireless communication links: (a) a line-of-sight link, (b) a modulating retroreflector link, and (c) a reflective link, all of which can provide the required data rate. We analyze the link performance based on these models. From the analysis, it is clear that as the water absorption increases, the communication performance decreases dramatically for the three link types. However, by using the scattered light it was possible to mitigate this decrease in some cases. It is concluded from the analysis that a high-data-rate underwater optical wireless network is a feasible solution for emerging applications such as UUV-to-UUV links and networks of sensors, and extended ranges in these applications could be achieved by applying a multi-hop concept.Keywords
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Subsea ultraviolet solar-blind broadband free-space optics communicationOptical Engineering, 2009
- Backscatter suppression for underwater modulating retroreflector links using polarization discriminationApplied Optics, 2009
- Underwater Wireless Optical Communication Channel Modeling and Performance Evaluation using Vector Radiative Transfer TheoryIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2008
- Spatial and temporal dispersion in high bandwidth underwater laser communication linksPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2008
- Characterization of the Beam-Spread Function for Underwater Wireless Optical Communications LinksIEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2008
- High bandwidth underwater optical communicationApplied Optics, 2008
- Optical plankton: an optical oceanic probing schemeJournal of Applied Remote Sensing, 2007
- Optical oceanography: Recent advances and future directions using global remote sensing and in situ observationsReviews of Geophysics, 2006
- Research challenges and applications for underwater sensor networkingPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2006
- EditorialAd Hoc Networks, 2005