Fiber coupling efficiency in ocean with adaptive optics corrections

Abstract

Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) is a very promising technology that enables high-speed data transfer through the use of laser beams in an oceanic turbulent medium. The high-tech fiber optical devices, which are already available in the market, can be integrated with the UOWC systems. When integration is achieved, oceanic turbulence, which distorts the wavefront of the propagating laser beam, plays an important role in reducing the fiber coupling efficiency (FCE), which in turn results in reducing the light power received from the fiber optical components. In this paper, we propose the use of the adaptive optics technique in a UOWC system to mitigate the effects of oceanic turbulence and boost the FCE. For this reason, the field correlation for a Gaussian laser beam is derived by using the Huygens–Fresnel principle. This way, the light power over the coupling lens and the light power accepted by the fiber core are formulated under the effect of adaptive optics corrections, which are represented by the number of Zernike modes. The results demonstrate that under the oceanic turbulence effect, the FCE of the UOWC system employing adaptive optics is always larger than that of the UOWC system employing no adaptive optics.