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Full-duplex Underwater Optical Communication Systems: A Review

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 Full-duplex Underwater Optical Communication
Systems: A Review
Imran Ullah Khan1,Basit Iqbal1, Liu Songzou1, Hui Li2, Gang Qiao1, Sartaj Khan1
1
College of Underwater Acoustic Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001 China
2
College of Intelligent Systems Science and Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, China
{ khan@hrbeu.edu.cn, 1basit@hrbeu.deu.cn, 1liusongzuo@hotmail.com, 2lihuieu@hrbeu.edu.cn,1qiaogang@hrbeu.edu.cn,
1
1
sartaj@hrbeu.edu.cn}
2021 International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences and Technologies (IBCAST) | 978-1-6654-0516-4/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/IBCAST51254.2021.9393206
Abstract— Underwater Optical Communication (UWOC)
systems are attractive to researchers due to their ability of low
power consumption, less complexity, high data rates, and
covert communication. Various half-duplex (HD) UWOC
systems has been proposed in this regard, but due to half-
duplex characteristics, these systems have failed to improve the
high throughput gain, high power efficiency and high data
rates etc. Hence, we provided a review of different Full-Duplex
UWOC systems using different light sources, with respect to
transmission range, operational power, data rate, wavelength,
and different underwater communication mediums. We
observed that these FD systems have improved the
communication range as well as data transfer rates, while
implementing different light sources (i.e. lasers, avalanche
photo diodes (APD), green and blue LEDs and lasers) in their
transceivers. However, we pointed out that power inefficiency
is a major issue faced by FD-UWOC systems. We also
presented BER comparison of different FD-UWOC systems,
implementing different modulations schemes, and pointed out
that FD UWOC systems implementing un-coded 8PPM and
BPSK outperformed. Finally, we concluded the paper and also
highlighted some future directions for the FD-UWOC systems,
and hope that our review can provide a platform for future
research in the targeted area.
Keywords— Non-return to zero On-Off Keying (NRZ-OOK),
Return to zero On-Off Keying (RZ-OOK), Pulse position
modulation (PPM), Field-programmable gate array (FPGA),
Binary phase shift keying (BPSK), Average symbol error
probability (ASEP)
I. INTRODUCTION
Underwater Optical Communication (UWOC) systems
have the ability to provide higher transmission bandwidth,
high data rates, low latency, less complexity, and low power
consumption[1, 2]. Extensive research has been carried out
in this area, and various half-duplex (HD) UWOC systems
has been developed, but due to half-duplex nature these
communication systems failed to improve the throughputs
gain, power efficiency and data rates etc.[2-11]. Hence,
researchers stepped-in towards Full-Duplex Underwater
Optical Communication (FD-UWOC) systems, and replaced
the half-duplex UWOC systems,which significantly resolved
the issues described. However, FD-UWOC system also
experience the issues such as high power and high cost
optical transceivers, short life time and less electrical to
optical conversion efficiency, and lower data rates etc.
Therefore,we reviewed different FD-UWOC systems using
different light sources with respect to transmission range,
operational power, data rate, wavelength, and different
underwater communication mediums. Review indicated that
various types of optical sources such as avalanche photo
diodes (APD), green and blue LEDs, and lasershave been
978-0-7381-0535-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE
Proceedings of 2021 18th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technology (IBCAST)
Islamabad, Pakistan, 12 – 16 January, 2021
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usedin the FD-UWOC systems, which improved the
communication range as well as the data transfer rates.
Review expressed that power efficiency is a major issue
faced by different FD underwater optical communication
systems. This issue is mostly resolved by implementing blue
LEDs as light sources,and achieved better power efficiency,
improved communication range, data transfer rates and low
power consumption[7, 12-16].
From review we pointed out that numerous factors such
as absorptions and scattering, attenuation, backscattered
effect, turbulence, multipath phenomenon, various types of
noises,greatly affect the performance of FD-UWOC systems
[1, 7, 13, 14, 17, 18].These issues can directly or indirectly
affect the absorption and scattering co-efficientof these
systems, which consequently affect the optical
communication range beneath the sea surface [1]. Various
techniques have been developed to solve these issues,
however, these areas are still open for research.
We presented BER comparison of various previously
proposed FD-UWOC systems [16, 18-20], implementing
different modulation schemes.We demonstrated that, the FD
UWOC systems implementing un-coded 8PPM [19] and
BPSK [18] outperformed in terms of low BER, compared to
FD UWOC systems using NRZ-OOK, RZ-OOK [16]and
4PPM [20] modulation schemes.
We also performed the comparison of different Blue
LEDs and Lasers based FD-UWOC systems, in terms of
BER verses SNR values using different wavelengths. The
FD-UWOC systems implementing lasers diodes experience
massive fluctuations in BER, in comparison to implementing
Blue LEDs at the lower SNR values, but at higher SNR
values these fluctuations minimize as the turbidity level
increases.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In
section II we reviewed different full-duplex underwater
optical communication systems.Section II.A
describesdifferent factors, which effect the reliability of FD-
UWOC systems. Section III describes the working
principles and advantages of different FD-modulation
schemes used in FD-UWOC systems. Section IV explains
the importance of coding techniques in the FD-UWOC
systems, and also describes the comparison of different
optical sources with respect to turbidity and attenuation
factors. Finally, section VI concludes the paper and some
future directions.
II. VARIOUS UNDERWATER OPTICAL FULL-DUPLEX
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS USING DIFFERENT LIGHT
SOURCES
Various underwater HD optical communication systems
have been proposed in literature, to improve the optical
communication in underwater environment, but due to half
886
duplex nature these communication systems have many
issues, and failed to improve the throughputs gain due to
their HD mode of communication[2, 21-27]. Hence, we
reviewed various full duplex UWOC systems,which
implemented various types of optical sources (i.e. avalanche
photo diodes (APD), green as well as blue LEDs, and lasers
diodes).It is observed that high data rates are achieved, while
implementing the blue color and lasers diodes by these
systems, as these have low power consumption, and are
environment friendly, and can be easily linked with any
modulation technique [16].For instance, in [14] the
researchers improved the range of underwater optical
communication systems by reducing the back scattering and
reflection of optical signal, and proposed various FD-UWOC
transceivers, while implementing different light emitting
sources such as blue/green LEDs and lasers [14].
In [7], an Omni-directional full-duplex optical
communication based on point-to-point communication
mechanism has been presented. In this system, transmitter is
based on LEDs(468nm central wavelength), which has the
ability of transmitting the green or blue light spectrum. Full-
duplex communication link is achieved by implementing
1013C1 high bandwidth transmitter, with the ability to
transmit at 10Mbps data rate. This full-duplex experimental
setup is used to calculate the turbidity level, viewing angle,
and separation distance effect.
It is observed that threshold viewing angle (TVA)angle
between transmitter and receiver must adjusted properly,
because it rotates with respect to the alignment axis. If TVA
increases then it effects the separation and turbidity levels
[7]. TVA can be a future application to design an effective
and reliable UW optical communication system.
In[13], FD-UWOC system using FM is proposed,
implementing Blue and Green LEDs for transmission. FM is
used to modulate the audio signal through visible light
between the deep sea divers. The proposed system is capable
of FD bidirectional communication up to the range of 2.7m
underwater, and received good quality audio signal in the
harsh underwater environment. In [16], a novel FD high
speed digital transceiver based on blue LED (XP-G) for
underwater optical communication is proposed. The
proposed FD system is capable of transmitting high data rate
of 235Mbps, with the distance up to11.5m in the underwater
environment. In addition, wearable devices are used
implementing non-return-to zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK)
modulation technique, with the on-shelf optical components,
for the transmission of audio and video information. This
makes the said FD system low cost, less complex, high speed
and achieve low latency.
In [15], the FD-UWOC system based on hand-shaking
(HS) mechanism is proposed . This FD system is tested in
10m underwater channel, which transmitted data at rate of
100kbps transfer rate. This system is also tested for
transferring different audio/videos and images, from one
platform to another. For this purpose, the value of baud rate
and packets formats of the transceivers are taken the same by
the PCs.
In [20] a high speed and highly reliable FD underwater
optical communication (UWOC) transceiver based on pulse
position modulation (PPM) technique is proposed. The
modulation is performed on the field-programmable gate
array (FPGA) system, and Reed-Solomon codes are used for
encoding/decoding and modulation/demodulation of the
transmitted and received signal. The date rate of 73kbit/s is
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achieved through FD high speed links, in the range of 100
meters, propagating the voice and data images.
In [12], the FD-UWOC system is proposed,
implementing laser diodes as light source, and remarkable
100Mbit/s data rate is achieved. The proposed system is
tested in sea environment up to the transmission range of
3.2m to 4.8m.
Weprovideda comparative study of different FD optical
underwater communication systems, implementing various
light sources with respect to transmission range, operational
power, data rate, wavelength, and different underwater
communication mediums, as shown in table I. The
mentioned tableindicates that various types of optical sources
like lasers, avalanche photo diodes (APD), green and blue
LEDs and lasers are used in UWOC systems, and improved
the communication range as well as data transfer rates of
these systems. Our study expressed that the optical
communication sourcessuch as laser diodes operated on high
voltages using the power from 10mW [12] to 100mW [7]
and provided better data transfer rate, but failed to achieve
long range communication, implementing in the sea water
conditions. Further, theBlue LEDs have better transmission
in the range of 3.5m to 50m using power of 350mA (2-3W),
in harsh sea environment[13, 14].However, the data rate is
effected for long range transmission. The avalanche photo
diodes (APD) are also implemented in FD underwater
communication systems[15, 16], and achieved better range
as well as low power consumption. However, the data rate
achieved is less than the data rate achieved by FD systems
using Lasers and Blue LEDs.
We also observed that by implementing less power,
simple white and green LEDs/Laser based FD-UWOC
systems achieved high data rates (i.e. up to Mbps) for short
range, however, blue LEDs/lasers based systems achieved
comparatively larger range while transmittingthe same data.
Wealso observed that power efficiency is a major issue faced
by different FD underwater optical communication systems.
The FD systems implemented Blue LEDs as light sources,
have the potential to achieve better power efficiency,
improved communication range, high data transfer rates and
low power consumption, compared to the FD systems
implemented other LEDs as light sources.
A. Factors Effecting Full-Duplex Underwater Optical
Communication protocols
In this section we identified various important factors
that significantly influence the performance of FD-UWOC
systems:
 Attenuation
Optical turbulence, scattering and absorption are the
major causes of the optical attenuation[7, 28-30].
Attenuation also occurs due to the existence of
numerous salts such as sodium chloride, magnesium
chloride, calcium chloride, and potassium chloride in
sea water, absorbing light wavelength to some extent
[1]. However, attenuation does not occur in pure
water [31]. Attenuation losses in optical
communication are characterized by the coefficient of
attenuation ‘c’, depending upon the wavelength of the
transmitting source [14, 31], as shown as:
O (z,  )  e  c (  ) z (1)
Where, λ represents the transmission wavelength. The
attenuation coefficient varies up varies up to 0.1m-1
887
 to 2.19m-1 in clear and pure ocean, due to the optical
properties of transmission medium.
It is noted in literature that the effect of attenuation in
underwater communication can easily be
minimizedby using the blue and green LED, because
these have low attenuation co-efficient[7, 28-30].
TABLE I. COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT FD-UWOC SYSTEMS USING VARIOUS LIGHT SOURCES
Author/year/ref Transmission Data rate Power Source Wavelen Ocean type
range gth
Baiden/ 2009 [7] 3m,5m,21m 8.2Mbit/s 100mW Laser diode 468nm Lake water, pool water
Marek 50m 0.57- 20W LEDs and 470nm Clear sea water
Doniec/2010 [32] 2.28Mbit/sec Avalanche
Photo diode
Vikrant/2012/ 10m, 3m 80~100kbit/s 200mW Avalanche 523nm Sea water, tap water
[15] Photo diode
Hu Xiuhan/2013 100m 73kbit/s N/A Laser diode 532nm Simulated Matlab water
[20]
Ahmad/2016 [13] 3.5m free space, N/A 350mA Blue LED, 470nm, Deep sea water
2.7m water Green LED 528nm
Li, Yang/2018 3.2m,1.6m,4.8m 100Mbit/sec 10mW Laser diode 520nm Sea water
[12]
Demao ye/2018 50m 1Mbit/sec 3W Blue LED, 475nm Sea water
[14]
Bhowal, A/2018 100m 3bit/sec LED/Laser Coastal sea water
[18]
Zixian We/2018 11.5m 235Mbit/sec 510mW Blue LED, 450nm – Sea water
[16] 520nm
APD
Hongxi Yin/2018 16m,4.8m,3.2m, 100Mbit/sec 0.047mW,0.046mW, Blue and 520nm Tap water,
[28] 1.6m Green LEDs
0.12mW, 0.095mW Clear sea water, Coastal
w. r .t water sea Water,
types Turbid harbor water
Zhiheng 3m, 5m, 10m 88Mbit/sec 80mW Blue and 520nm Pure sea water, Deep sea
Zhou/2019 Green laser water
[30] diode
Kapila W. S/2020 7-9m 20dBW Photo diode Sea water
[33]
Jinjia Li/ 2020 10-14.5m 1Mbps 10W Blue LED 445nm Water tank
[29]
 Absorption and scattering of UWOC links [1, 18, 29]. Literature review
Absorption and scattering occur when water indicated that turbulence has not been much explored.
molecules absorb photon energy, resulting in However, there are few articles examining the
multipath fading and greatly affect the optical signal behavior of UWOC channel with respect to
propagation, which in turn results in signal and turbulence. For instance, in[17, 35] the evaluation of
directional losses[1, 28, 30, 32, 34]. Absorption and turbulence strength is carried out, while transmitting
scattering also degrade the bit rate, when the optical data in an image forms, to different depths of the
signals propagates through the turbid water [1, 7, 29, ocean. There are various methods and techniques
30]. It is also due to the presence of inorganic which have been implemented, to manage the light
materials such as soluble salts and unnecessary propagation in different sea environments, for precise
particles (e.g. sand and pollution). It can also occurs and accurate communication[7]. However, there are
due to organic materials such as sea plants, decaying still some drawbacks, particularly related to
tissue, small plants (i.e. chlorophyll) and other yellow experimental models and test-beds. Consequently, an
substances [1, 17]. Literature review showed that effective mathematical modeling and channel
there is huge number of issues which directly or estimation are required, for further improvement in
indirectly affect the absorption and scattering co- the practical models[18].
efficient, which in turn affect the optical
communication beneath the sea surface [1].  Backscattered effect
The operation of FD underwater optical link is a
 Turbulence challenging task, due to the presence of back
Any change in the reflective index of optical scattered light, while having transmission in similar
communication path, due to the variation in wavelengths in FD mode [14, 17]. Backscattering
underwater environment such as temperature, water normally affects the receiver end, during the
density and salinity, increases the intensity of the propagation of a FD underwater optical signal as
signal, at the receiver, and degrades the effectiveness shown in Fig. 1 as[17]: To overcome the issue of

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 backscattered light, the smart transmitter technique
has been implemented, which has the ability to
estimate the quality of water as well as the
attenuation coefficient created by the backscattering
light of the channel [14, 17]. Further, polarization
technique is used, to reduce the impact of optical
backscattering from the transmitter on the receiver.
However, this area is still open for further research.
R T
Fig. 1. Backscattered light phenomenon at the receiver
 Noise Impact
Noise is a natural phenomenon depending upon the
geographical locations and the wavelength of the
communication channel [1, 13]. Noise has high
impact in harbor side as compared to deep water
environment, due to manmade noise, factories,
shipping activities, offshore oil production and
machinery etc. Further, solar interference has high
effects of noise, and degrades the FD-UWOC links
performance[17, 18, 29]. Biological luminance is
another source of background noise in deep sea. To
overcome noise, narrow band spectral filters are
employed at the front side of the receiver [1, 7].
 Multipath phenomenon
Multipath phenomenon occurs when detector
receives optical beam from multiple reflecting
objects, and decreases the data rate due to inter-
symbol-interference. In shallow water there is high
multipath effect, due to the presence of various
reflective surfaces, while in deep sea, the reflective
surfaces as well as bottom reflection is ignored [1,
29]. Multipath is a very critical issue in the FD-
UWOC system due to the scattering photons. These
scattering photons increases the high bit error rate in
the FD-UWO communication systems [7]. High
latency underwater communication channel also
occurs due to the multipath propagation [13].
III. MODULATION SCHEMES USED IN FULL-DUPLEX UW
OPTICAL COMMUNICATION
Modulation schemes have gained importance, due to their
usage in improving the performance underwater optical
communication (FD-UOC) systems. For instance, the widely
used modulation scheme such as free-space optical (FSO)
modulation technique, has been developed in late 1960s for
the military and aerospace applications [7]. FSO is famous
for enhancing the bandwidth and security in the point-to-
point data transfer communication systems [7]. Further, the
latest FSO modulation has the ability to transmit 2.5Gbit/s
data rate up to several kilometers [7, 36]. However, FSO
modulation highly effects due to absorption and scattering in
the water. Some other modulation schemes are explained
below:
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A. Intensity modulation (IM)
Intensity modulation is the most prominent modulation
scheme, which is implemented in the laser and free space
underwater optical communication systems [15]. IM is also
applied to bypass the current through the various
transmission setups in the Ethernet module circuitry[28].
B. Pulse position modulation (PPM)
The PPM schemes are implemented by various
researchers, as these do not require any dynamic threshold,
and has high energy efficiency. But these conditions are only
valid in the lower bandwidth utilization and in more complex
transceivers. The disadvantage which we experienced is the
time synchronization issue while using PPM modulation.
In [20] the modulation timing and signal processing of
the PPM has been analyzed, while the pulse width of the
transmitted signal is 11ns and the mean of the frequency
deviation is less than 15%. In [19] more complex PPM
schemes such as 16-PPM and 8-PPM are implemented to
improve the signal’s bandwidth efficiency. The authors
showed that the BER performance obtained by the PPM is
nearly equal to the performance obtained by the On-off-
keying (OOK) modulation.
C. ON/OFF Keying (OOK)
The OOK modulation is actively used in the FD-UWOC
systems due to its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. In
[16],the OOK operates in two pulse formats, i.e. either in the
form of return to zero (RZ-OOK) or non-return to zero
(NRZ-OOK) form. In both forms ‘0’ represents no power.In
NRZ-OOK modulation binary ‘1’ represents twice the power
of the average power, while in RZ-OOK ‘1’ represents 4
time the average power. The RZ-OOK has higher energy
efficiency as compared to the NRZ-OOK. The OOK signal
experiences fading due to the absorption and scattering
phenomenon, and to alleviate this, dynamic threshold (DT)
technique is used by various FD-UOC systems. In addition,
the OOK has two major disadvantages i.e. the low energy
and low spectral efficiency, however, it is still the most
popular intensity measurement scheme used by UWOC
systems[37].
D. Binary Phase shaft Keying (BPSK )
In [18],the BPSK modulation scheme is used for the
estimation of average symbol error probability (ASEP), and
the probabilities of OWR and TWR-AF based FD-UWOC
systems are compared, and proved that ASEP for long-
normal underwater outperformed.
E. Frequency Modulation (FM)
In [13], the frequency modulation is implemented to
carry the voice signal by using the visible light
communication between the two divers in the deep sea
environment. At the transmitter section, FM was achieved by
the internal voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) and phase
lock loop. The authors used FM because it is less complex
for the propagation of voice signal, and in the sever water
condition the receiver can easily extract the information from
the noisy signal.
We presented the comparative analysis of BER obtained by
different FD Underwater communication systems [18], [19],
[16], [20], while implementing different modulation
schemes, as shown in figure 2.It is demonstrated that FD
UWOC systems which implemented un-coded 8PPM [19]
and BPSK [18], outperformed in terms of low BER,
889
compared to NRZ-OOK, RZ-OOK [16], 4PPM [20] extent, as the turbidity level increases. The blue LEDs
modulation schemes. Thementioned OOK schemes are operates on fixed voltage and current,and the operating
implemented in the FSO links because of their low cost and power of the laser diodes are not much higher than the blue
less complexity[16]. However, the PPM[19, 20] and LEDs [2].
OOK[16] could be implemented with direct modulation or In Fig. 3, we compared the FD-UWOC system using
intensity modulation schemes. Blue LEDs using different wavelengths, in terms of BER vs
0
10
SNR. The Blue LEDs light cannot easily absorb in sea water
and have less attenuation co-efficient, as compared to the
NRZ-OOK other colors LEDs[13, 16].
-2
10 RZ-OOK We take the 475nm [14], 470nm [13], 450nm [16] Blue
BPSK
LEDs, using a transmitted power of 3W, 350mA, and
Bit error rate (BER)

4PPM
-4 8PPM 510mW, respectively. We observed that the Blue LEDs
10 using shorter wavelength, demonstrated better efficiency at
higher SNR values. Similarly in Fig.4, we take Lasers with
-6 520nm [12], 468nm [7] and 532 nm wavelengths, using a
10
transmitted power of 10mW, 100mW and 20mW,
respectively [20]. We observed that FD-UWOC systems
-8
10 using lasers, experienced massive fluctuations, as compared
to the FD-UWOC systems using Blue LEDs at the lower
-10
SNR values. But at higher SNR values, the fluctuations of
10 LEDs and Lasers minimized to some extent, as the turbidity
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
level increased. We noticed that careful system adjustment
SNR (dB) can improve the LED/laser performance, by reducing the
Fig. 2. Performance comparison of different un-coded PPM [15, 20], value of off-set. However, it is observed from figures that
OOK [16], BPSK [18] modulation schemes used in FD-UWOC systems as shorter wavelength LEDs provide better power efficiency at
the function of SNR by using the MATLAB®. higher SNR values.
IV. CODING TECHNIQUES IN FULL-DUPLEX-UNDERWATER 0
10
OPTICAL COMMUNICATION. 475nm Blue LED
In this section we provided a review of different coding 470nm Blue LED
-1
10 450nm Blue LED
techniques used in various FD-UWOC systems. For instance,
in[7] to calculate the data and transaction rate, benchmarking
Bit error rate (BER)

is implemented to estimate how precisely the communication -2

10
performs in varying underwater channel conditions. Another
efficient parameter introduced in [7] is the transaction per
second (T/S), which has the ability to calculate the number of -3
10
requests and their responses in unit second.
In [18], ASEP is usedto evaluate BPSK in cooperative -4
network based FD-UWOC system. In [16], forward error 10
correction (FEC) based estimation technique is implemented
in FD-UWOC system, to mitigate the impact of optical
attenuation and to improve the BER during the low SNR 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
values[19].Further, the authors used the error control Signal to noise ratio (dB)
technique (ECT), which significantly improved the power
efficiency of thementionedFD optical communication Fig. 3. BER vs SNR of 475nm Blue LED link (3W), 470nm Blue LED
link (350mA) and 450nm Blue LED link (510mW) FD-UWOC systems
system. w.r.t turbidity effect.
We observed from review that various block codes have
developed by researchers to increase the robustness of the 0
10
underwater optical communication systems. The first block
532nm Laser
code used was the Reed Solomon (RS) code, which 520nm Laser
isextensively used for encoding/decoding and -1
10 468nm Laser
modulation/demodulation of the transmitted and received
Bit error rate (BER)

signal[20],andthe FD-UWOC system achieved the data rate -2

of 73kbit/s up to the range of 100meters in the underwater 10
environment.
-3
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS 10
We performed comparative analysis of different Blue
LEDs and Lasers based FD-UWOC systems, in terms of -4
BER verses SNR values, using different wavelengths during 10
turbidity and attenuation effect. We observed that FD-
UWOC systems which implemented lasers diodes,
experienced massive fluctuations in BER (i.e. FD-UWOC 0 2 4 6 8 10 12
systems used Blue LEDs at the lower SNR values), but at Signal to noise ratio (dB)
higher SNR values these fluctuations minimized to some

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 BER Vs SNR of 532nm laser , 520nm laser (10mW), and 468nm laser
FD-UWOC systems links (100mW) comparison w.r.t turbidity
We also performed comparative analysis of different blue
and lasers based FD-UWOC systems, with respect to BER vs
attenuation coefficient (c), implementing different
wavelengths. Fig 5 and Fig 6 show the comparison of BER
vs attenuation coefficient, for 475nm[14], 470nm[13],
450nm[16] wavelengthsblue LEDs,while 532nm[20],
520nm[12], and 468nm[7] lasers diodes, respectively. The
470nm and 450nm LEDs is operated at 38mW and 510mW
power, respectively, while the LED 475nm is operated at
power of 3W. The Lasers diodes of 532nm, 520nm, and
468nm wavelength operated at 20mW, 10mW, and 100mW
power, respectively. The bias voltage for all the LEDs is kept
same. It is observed that as the difference in the LEDs/lasers
power level decreases, the shorter level wavelength
LEDs/lasers showed better performance.
Fig. 4. effect.
0 and Lasers minimize.
10
-1
10
Bit error rate (BER)
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DIRECTION
We have reviewed different FD-UWOC systems using
different light sources. We observed that various types of
optical sources such as lasers, avalanche photo diodes
(APD), green and blue LEDs and lasersare used in the FD-
UWOC systems, which significantly improved the
communication range as well as data transfer rates of these
systems. We observed that power efficiency is a major issue
faced by different FD underwater optical communication
systems. The FD systems implementing Blue LEDs as light
sources, have the potential to achieve better power
efficiency, improved communication range, data transfer
rates and low power consumption as compared to FD
systems implementing other LEDs as light sources From
comparative study of different wavelength Blue LEDs and
Lasers based FDUWOC systems, in terms of BER verses
SNR values, it is shown that lasers experiences massive
fluctuations as compared to the Blue LEDs at the lower SNR
values, but at higher SNR values the fluctuations of LEDs
In future, it is needed to implement the FD-UWOC
systems by evaluating their throughput gains and latency
effects in different sea water types. It is also necessary to
deeply investigate the attenuation effect, multipath and

scattering of photons. Further, an efficient mathematical

-2
10 475nm Blue LED channel estimation is required for a reliable FD-UWOC link.
470nm Blue LED Backscattering is also very critical issue, which could be
450nm Blue LED minimized by using the polarization technique. Moreover,
-3
10 turbidity is still an open issue in the FD-UWOC systems.
The effect of attenuation in underwater communication can
-4
be easily minimized by using high quality blue and green
10 LED because these LEDs have low attenuation co-efficient.
The increase in TVA effects the separation and turbidity
levels, and can be a parameter in future application to design
0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4 an effective and reliable UW optical communication system.
Value of c (1/m) The smart transmitter is implemented to overcome the
issue of backscattered light, which has the ability to estimate
Fig. 5. The comparison of Bit error rate vs. attenuation coefficient for 475 the quality of water as well as the attenuation coefficient
nm Blue LED (3W), 470 nm Blue LED (350 mA) and 450 nm Blue
LED (510mW) based FD-UWOC systems transmission. Value of c
created by the backscattering light of the channelHowever,
for all Blue LEDS are scaled to match the wavelength value of this area is still open for further research.
transmission. It is indicated that turbulence has not been much
explored. However, there are few articles which examined
0
10 the behavior of UWOC system with respect to turbulence
532nm Laser However, there are still some drawbacks, particularly related
468nm Laser
to experimental models and test-beds.
-1 520nm Laser
10 Multipath phenomenon is also a critical issue for the FD-
UWOC systems, due to the scattering of photons and is a big
Bit error rate (BER)

-2
challenge for FD-UWOC systems and can be an open area of
10 future research.

-3
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
10 This work is supported by College Underwater Acoustics
Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Heilongjiang,
-4 150001, Harbin, P.R. China.
10

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