Influence of watertight optical window with plain glass on receiving field for underwater wireless optical...

Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has attracted much attention recently due to its superiority of high transmission speed. In many UWOC applications, to establish communication links easier, the receiver has quite a wide field. However, the performance of the receiving field is affected by watertight encapsulation in practice, especially when the optical window is produced with plain glass. To study such an influence, in this paper, we first establish a theoretical model based on the Monte Carlo method. Then, we analyze the influence with different structure parameters of watertight encapsulation. The simulation results show that to reduce such an impact, the optical window should be thinner, the detector photosurface and optical window surface should be larger, and the space between the detector and optical window should be smaller. In the ideal situation, the largest workable receiving field is about 96° for UWOC. In other situations, the workable receiving field would be smaller. The simulation method and results presented in this paper are pragmatic and useful to UWOC receiver design.