Relay-assisted optical wireless communications in turbid water

Abstract

Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) systems are subject to severe performance degradation due to undissolved particles that make the water turbid. The point source diffusion of a substance in water creates a Gaussian-distributed attenuation spread for a given time instance, which makes communication challenging. To overcome this issue, we propose a dual-hop UOWC system in which the transmitter-receiver link is assisted by several amplify-and-forward relay nodes. To characterize the performance gains of this relay system, we study the bit error rate assuming on-off keying modulation. We investigate the impact of key system and particle distribution parameters such as the transmit power, the number of relays, and the spatial position of the attenuation spread on the performance.