Experimental Demonstration of High-Sensitivity Underwater Optical Wireless Communication Based on Photocounting Receiver
Chao Li,
Zichen Liu,
Daomin Chen,
Xiong Deng,
Fulong Yan,
Siqi Li,
Zhijia Hu
Affiliations
Chao Li
Information Materials and Intelligent Sensing Laboratory of Anhui Province, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
Zichen Liu
Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Daomin Chen
Shanghai Huawei Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai 200001, China
Xiong Deng
Center for Information Photonics and Communications, School of Information Science and Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Fulong Yan
Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group, Beijing 100102, China
Siqi Li
Information Materials and Intelligent Sensing Laboratory of Anhui Province, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
Zhijia Hu
Information Materials and Intelligent Sensing Laboratory of Anhui Province, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China
In this paper, we propose a high-sensitivity long-reach underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system with an Mbps-scale data rate. Using a commercial blue light-emitting diode (LED) source, a photon counting receiver, and return-to-zero on–off keying modulation, a receiver sensitivity of −70 dBm at 7% FEC limit is successfully achieved for a 5 Mbps intensity modulation direct detection UOWC system over 10 m underwater channel. For 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps data rates, the receiver sensitivity is enhanced to −76 dBm and −74 dBm, respectively. We further investigate the system performance under different water conditions: first type of seawater (c = 0.056 m−1), second type (c = 0.151 m−1), and third type (c = 0.398 m−1). The maximum distance of the 2 Mbps signal can be extended up to 100 m in the first type of seawater.
