Comparative analysis of underwater wireless optical communication system

The performance of an underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) system is affected by many factors, such as channel conditions, modulation and detection techniques, type of optical source, etc. The UWOC system performance was investigated in the presence of weak and strong turbulence. Pure sea was the water type used for the performance analysis. Binary phase shift keying, quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), 16-quadrature amplitude modulation, and non-return to zero-on–off keying were used for comparison. Further, a continuous wave laser was used as the optical source, and photodetectors are at the receiver. The performance of the UWOC system was analyzed in terms of the bit error rate (BER). The BER performance was evaluated using the log-normal probability density function (PDF) in weak turbulence and the gamma-gamma PDF in strong turbulence. In all modulation techniques, QPSK had the best BER performance. The BER was reduced further using avalanche photodiode (APD) as the photodetector instead of positive-intrinsic-negative diode for the same transmitter power and channel conditions. In weak turbulence, a BER of 10 − 8 was achieved at a transmitter power of 12.5 dBm using the QPSK modulation technique and APD as the photodetector. For the same conditions, a BER of 9 × 10 − 7 was achieved in strong turbulence. The multiplication gain, dark current, and carrier ionisation ratio of the photodetector were optimized for better BER performance in the UWOC system.