Underwater optical communications with a single photon-counting system

This paper discusses the system engineering challenges involved with the transmission of optically encoded data through water. The scenarios of data transmission from an airborne platform to a submerged platform and data transmission from a submerged platform to another submerged platform will be discussed. A photon-counting experimental system was constructed to investigate the transmission of optical data through a 1m long tank of water. This test system incorporated a laser diode operating at a wavelength of 450nm and an optical receiver containing a shallow junction, silicon single photon avalanche diode. The optical data was transmitted through the tank containing similar to 100 litres of water at transmission rates equivalent to 40Mb/s. The attenuation of the optical path was increased by increasing the level of scattering of the photons using Maalox. The effects on the temporal distribution of photons in the optical pulse from adding Maalox are also discussed. The synchronisation of the transmitter and receiver clocks was investigated using reference headers appended to the encoded message signal which the receiver used to correct for timing drift. The performance of this experimental system and experimental results are discussed.