Monocular vision aided optical tracking for underwater optical wireless communications

Abstract

Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) has received increasing attention due to its distinctive characteristics such as high bandwidth and low latency. However, the UOWC link is usually vulnerable to water flow, underwater turbulence and the terminals’ own vibration. Thus, to maintain a stable transmission link, an accurate tracking method is essential for UOWC systems. In this paper, a monocular vision aided optical tracking method is proposed, where the deviation degree of the laser spot is employed to realize autonomous real-time alignment of the receiver with the transmitter. Experimental results verify that with the proposed tracking method, the bit error ratio can be ensured to be below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8×10−3 even under strong disturbance for the practical UOWC system.