Underwater wireless optical communication using a lens-free solar panel receiver

• Published in: Optics communications 2018-11, Vol.426, p.94-98
• Main Authors: Kong, Meiwei, Sun, Bin, Sarwar, Rohail, Shen, Jiannan, Chen, Yifei, Qu, Fengzhong, Han, Jun, Chen, Jiawang, Qin, Huawei, Xu, Jing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: OFDM; Solar panel; Underwater wireless optical communication
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2018.05.019

In this paper, we first propose that self-powered solar panels featuring large receiving area and lens-free operation have great application prospect in underwater vehicles or underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) for data collection. It is envisioned to solve the problem of link alignment. The low-cost solar panel used in the experiment has a large receiving area of 5 cm2 and a receiving angle of 20°. Over a 1-m air channel, a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal at a data rate of 20.02 Mb/s is successfully transmitted within the receiving angle of 20°. Over a 7-m tap water channel, we achieve data rates of 20.02 Mb/s using 16-QAM, 18.80 Mb/s using 32-QAM and 22.56 Mb/s using 64-QAM, respectively. By adding different quantities of Mg(OH)2 powders into the water, the impact of water turbidity on the solar panel-based underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is also investigated.