Underwater Visible Light Communication (UVLC)

The rising demand for underwater communication systems stems from the expanding range of human activities in underwater realms, including scientific data collection, environmental monitoring, military and national security uses, and oil field exploration. While wire-line systems, especially optical fibers, offer real-time communication, their inflexibility, high costs, and operational drawbacks limit their practical use, fueling the need for underwater wireless communication. Acoustic signaling is a common choice, enabling transmission over kilometers but with quite limited data rates, thus hindering high-bandwidth applications. For shorter ranges, optical communication emerges as a high-capacity alternative, utilizing the transparency of water to transmit blue or green light. Modeling the underwater optical channel is particularly important for designing effective Underwater Visible Light Communication (UVLC) systems. The traditional Beer-Lambert law faces limitations, leading to exploration of alternative models for accurate predictions. Evaluating UVLC performance reveals that the propagation distance is limited to tens of meters in non-turbid water under ideal conditions. However, this distance can decrease due to other factors, including turbulence-induced fading, which affects link fidelity. Therefore, solutions are needed to improve link fidelity and overcome the limitations.