Experimental demonstration of 50-m/5-Gbps underwater optical wireless communication with low-complexity chaotic encryption

In this paper, a low-complexity two-level chaotic encryption scheme is introduced and experimentally demonstrated to improve the physical layer security of a 450-nm laser underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system using discrete Fourier transform spread discrete multi-tone (DFT-S DMT) modulation. In the first encryption stage, the original bit stream is encrypted with a chaotic sequence based on a one-dimensional Logistic map. In the second encryption stage, the real and imaginary components of the DFT-S symbols are further encrypted with a pair of separate chaotic sequences, which are generated from a two-dimensional Logistic iterative chaotic map with infinite collapse (2D-LICM). The experimental results indicate that the encryption operation has no negative effect on the performance of the proposed UOWC system. For chaotic encryption, the DFT-S DMT gives a better performance than the DMT scheme under different water turbidities. 55-m/4.5-Gbps and 50-m/5-Gbps underwater transmissions are successfully demonstrated by the chaotic encrypted DFT-S DMT scheme. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time to verify the feasibility of chaotic encryption in a high-speed UOWC system.