Performance analysis of underwater vertical wireless optical communication links using selection combining.

Area of Science:

• Optical Communications
• Underwater Acoustics
• Wireless Networks

Background:

• Underwater wireless optical communication (UVWOC) is crucial for data transmission in aquatic environments.
• Performance is degraded by underwater turbulence, pointing errors, and attenuation.
• Variations in temperature and salinity cause turbulence-induced fading.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the performance of UVWOC links using on-off key modulation and selection combining.
• To model the impact of strong turbulence, attenuation, and pointing errors on vertical UVWOC links.
• To derive closed-form expressions for average bit error rate (BER) and outage probability (OP).

Main Methods:

• Utilized a cascaded gamma-gamma distribution to model turbulence in multiple non-identical layers.
• Incorporated attenuation losses and pointing errors into the link model.
• Derived closed-form expressions for BER and OP for systems with multiple receive detectors.

Main Results:

• Developed accurate mathematical expressions for UVWOC link performance.
• Quantified the impact of turbulence, pointing errors, and attenuation on BER and OP.
• Validated the derived expressions through Monte Carlo simulations.

Conclusions:

• The study provides a robust analytical framework for UVWOC performance evaluation.
• The derived expressions are essential for designing reliable underwater optical communication systems.
• The findings contribute to advancing underwater data transmission capabilities.