Gb/s Underwater Wireless Optical Communications Using Series-Connected GaN Micro-LED Arrays

High speed wireless communications are highly desirable for many industrial and scientific underwater applications. Acoustic communications suffer from high latency and limited data rates, while Radio Frequency communications are severely limited by attenuation in seawater. Optical communications ar...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE photonics journal 2020-04, Vol.12 (2), p.1-10
Main Authors: Arvanitakis, Georgios N., Bian, Rui, McKendry, Jonathan J. D., Cheng, Chen, Xie, Enyuan, He, Xiangyu, Yang, Gang, Islim, Mohamed S., Purwita, Ardimas A., Gu, Erdan, Haas, Harald, Dawson, Martin D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arrays
Attenuation
Bandwidth
Bandwidths
Data transmission
Drinking water
GaN
Light emitting diodes
micro-light-emitting-diode arrays
Optical attenuators
Optical fiber communication
Optical scattering
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
Radio attenuation
Seawater
turbid waters
Underwater acoustics
Underwater communication
underwater wireless optical communications
Wave attenuation
Wireless communication
Wireless communications
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:High speed wireless communications are highly desirable for many industrial and scientific underwater applications. Acoustic communications suffer from high latency and limited data rates, while Radio Frequency communications are severely limited by attenuation in seawater. Optical communications are a promising alternative, offering high transmission rates (up to Gb/s), while water has relatively low attenuation at visible wavelengths. Here we demonstrate the use of series-connected micro-light-emitting-diode (μLED) arrays consisting of 6 μLED pixels either 60 μm or 80 μm in diameter and operating at 450 nm. These devices increase the output power whilst maintaining relatively high modulation bandwidth. Using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) we demonstrate underwater wireless data transmission at rates of up to 4.92 Gb/s, 3.22 Gb/s and 3.4 Gb/s over 1.5 m, 3 m and 4.5 m, respectively, with corresponding bit error ratios (BERs) of 1.5 × 10 -3 , 1.1 × 10 -3 and 3.1 × 10 -3 , through clear tap water, and Mb/s rates through >5 attenuation lengths (ALs) in turbid waters.
ISSN:1943-0655
1943-0655
1943-0647
DOI:10.1109/JPHOT.2019.2959656