Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Subsea Optical Wireless Communication System in the Arabian Sea Using Field Data

Abstract

AbstractThe article presents the effectiveness of a subsea optical wireless communication (OWC) system comprising a light-emitting diode (LED) transmitter and a photodiode (PD) receiver when operated at various water depths in the Arabian Sea. An optical attenuation profile identified from solar hyperspectral irradiance measured in up to a 90-m water depth in the Arabian Sea using a remotely operated vehicle is used as inputs to the subsea OWC communication effectiveness assessment (CEA) model developed using MATLAB. It is identified that a 30-W LED-PD-based OWC system, with the noise equivalent power of 10−12 W/√Hz, could have a horizontal range and data rate of 146 m and 1 Mbps in water depths ≥220 m in the Arabian Sea. For the same data rate, the horizontal range reduces to 65 m at a 90-m water depth in the same location during the day. In coastal waters, the system could have a data rate of 10 kbps at a 30-m range. A six-fold increase in the transmitter electrical power could increase the horizontal range by a factor of 1.5. An experimental 30-W LED-PD-based OWC system developed and operated in a calibrated tank facility is found to have a data rate and range of 3.2 Mbps and 3 m, respectively. The performance of the prototype complies with the ideal CEA model with an accuracy of 84% under similar inherent channel property and apparent system parameters.