Design and Analysis of Co-operative Acoustic and Optical Hybrid Communication for Underwater Communication

Abstract

Underwater communication is an emerging field of research currently, which is an important aspect in predicting the climatic conditions accurately. Underwater communication is disadvantageous when compared with aerial communication because water is basically non transparent and blurred to electromagnetic radiations excluding visible region. In the visible region, factors such as suspended sediments and the presence of aquatic life affects the penetration of light. It may penetrate only upto a few hundreds of metres in clear water and in turbid waters, penetration is even less. Underwater communication is also affected by Intersymbol Interference (ISI) due to multipath fading. Currently, a booming and mature technology called acoustic technology is employed for underwater communication systems. Acoustic systems are proficient for long distance communication. But acoustic communication has limitations. They have very low data rates for monitoring applications and due to velocity of sound in water, it has a huge latency which means a significant time delay. To cope up with the limitations of acoustic communication, we use optical communication whose wavelength lies in the visible region. Optical communication is known for high data rate and low latency. Many accidents take place under water such as the plane crash, ship sinking. It is a tedious job to find the lost debris. Hence an underwater optical link is developed which could identify the lost debris. In this project, a hybrid model comprising of acoustic as well as the optical link is proposed. The comparison between acoustic and optical technique is studied and simulated using MATLAB simulation and the responses were plotted. The simulated results can be used in various applications including climate monitoring, military services.