The effect of exposure time on the performance of an underwater optical camera communication system

The camera exposure time could highly affect the performance of an optical camera communication systems. In commercial cameras, the exposure time is calculated as a function of the background light. In this paper, the effect of exposure time on the performance of an underwater optical camera communication (UWOCC) system is investigated various seawaters conditions. Furthermore, the effect of the link depth of UWOCC on the exposure time of a commercial camera is investigated. Monte Carlo is used to model the UWOCC system considering the channel absorption and scattering. Results show that, the exposure time highly affects the bit error rate performance, with the sun light having no significant effect on the exposure time for the clear, coastal and harbor seawaters for the link depth greater than 10, 4, and 0.9 m, respectively.