52 m/9 Gb/s PAM4 plastic optical fiber-underwater wireless laser transmission convergence with a laser beam reducer

Abstract

A 52 m/9 Gb/s four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) plastic optical fiber (POF)-underwater wireless laser transmission (UWLT) convergence with a laser beam reducer is proposed. A 52 m/9 Gb/s PAM4 POF-UWLT convergence is practically demonstrated with the application of a laser beam reducer to reduce the collimated beam diameter. A 50 m graded-index (GI)-POF is employed as an underwater extender to efficiently enhance the coverage of UWLT. The performances of PAM4 POF-UWLT convergence in view of bit error rate (BER) and eye diagrams improve with the decrease of the collimated beam diameter because of the small amount of light absorbed by clear ocean water. Competent BER and eye diagrams (three independent eye diagrams) are achieved over a 50 m GI-POF transmission with a 2 m clear ocean water link.