100 m/500 Mbps underwater optical wireless communication using an NRZ-OOK modulated 520 nm laser diode

In this paper, we proposed and experimentally demonstrated a long-distance high-speed underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system in a laboratory environment by using a low-cost green laser diode (LD) and power-efficient non-return-to-zero on-off keying (NRZ-OOK) modulation. The system successfully achieved a data rate of 500 Mbps through a 100 m tap-water channel by using a pigtailed single-mode fiber 520 nm green LD. The tap water was measured to have an attenuation coefficient comparable to pure seawater. The measured system bit error rate (BER) value of 2.5 × 10-3 was below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10-3 with 7% overhead. The distance can be extended if the received optical power is allowed to reduce to the minimum power to meet the data rate requirement. Based on the measured minimum required power and the power decay model in the water channel, the transmission performance was predicted to be 146 m/500 Mbps and 174 m/100 Mbps.