Computational temporal ghost imaging for long-distance underwater wireless optical communication

This work proposes an underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) system based on computational temporal ghost imaging (CTGI) and a low-bandwidth high-sensitivity avalanche photodiode. After measuring the attenuation coefficient of water, a series of neutral density filters is used to attenuate the optical power to estimate the distance of UWOC. Experimental results show that under the conditions of 4 GHz transmitting frequency and 144.37 m estimated distance, through CTGI, we can achieve error-free transmission, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio is much higher than on–off keying. Additionally, after adopting the segmented reconstruction method, under the condition of 4 GHz transmitting frequency and 193.10 m estimated distance, we can also achieve error-free transmission. At the same time, the relationship between UWOC performance and the number of segments is also studied. This research provides a novel UWOC technique that enables high-frequency transmission signals to be detected by a low-bandwidth photodetector for long-distance UWOC.