On Limitations of Using Silicon Photo-Multipliers for Underwater Wireless Optical Communications

This paper considers the use of Silicon photomultipliers in underwater wireless optical communication systems. We study the limitations arising from the limited bandwidth of these components as well as the solar background noise in relatively shallow waters. In particular, we show the interest of frequency-domain equalization in increasing the link data rate using on-off-keying and pulse-position modulation. Also, for a worst-case scenario, we determine the operation depth (with respect to the receiver)beyond which the link performance is not affected by the solar noise.