Aqua Optical: A Lightweight Device for High-rate Long-range Underwater Point-to-Point Communication

This paper describes Aqua Optical, an underwater optical communication system. Three optical modems have been developed: a long range system, a short range system, and a hybrid. We describe their hardware and software architectures and highlight trade-offs. We present pool and ocean experiments with each system. In clear water Aqua Optical was tested to achieve a data rate of 1.2Mbit/sec at distances up to 30m. The system was not tested beyond 30m. In water with visibility estimated at 3m Aqua Optical achieved communication at data rates of 0.6Mbit/sec at distances up to 9m.