State of the art analysis of underwater optical communications and their applications in the military field
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Date
2021-04-30
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Centro Universitario de la Defensa de Marín
Abstract
Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) is a developing technology of great interest
to the industry, scientific community and military, more specifically to the Navy, who has the operative
task of Sea Control. Despite the astounding progress achieved in underwater acoustic communication,
its small bandwidth strongly limits its transmission capacity in an era where the amount of information
grows exponentially. Therefore, UOWC has attracted considerable attention in recent years, as it offers
a much higher transmission bandwidth, thus providing greater data rate. However, UOWC is severely
dependent on the properties of the underwater environment, the reason why they must be studied in
depth.
This paper analyzes the state of the art of UOWC, providing an exhaustive research on the factors
and phenomena affecting the underwater light propagation as well as its main challenges and recent
technological advances. Afterwards, a simple UOWC prototype is designed to carry out assorted
experiments in order to test the literature and draw meaningful conclusions. Finally, the application of
this technology in the military field is discussed in terms of its feasibility, usefulness, main advantages
and difficulties of its implementation, opening up a promising future for its development.
Description
Keywords
UOWC, Attenuation, LASER, LED, Military Applications