Establishing and Maintaining a Reliable Optical Wireless Communication in Underwater Environment

Abstract

This paper proposes the trajectory tracking problem between an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and a mobile surface ship, both equipped with optical communication transceivers. The challenging issue is to maintain stable connectivity between the two autonomous vehicles within an optical communication range. We define a directed optical line-of-sight (LoS) link between the two vehicle systems. The transmitter is mounted on the AUV, while the surface ship is equipped with an optical receiver. However, this optical communication channel needs to preserve a stable transmitter-receiver position to reinforce service quality, which typically includes a bit rate and bit error rates. A cone-shaped beam region of the optical receiver is approximated based on the channel model; then, a minimum bit rate is ensured if the AUV transmitter remains inside of this region. Additionally, we design two control algorithms for the transmitter to drive the AUV to the angle of the maximum achievable data rate and maintain it in the cone-shaped beam region and under an uncertain oceanic environment. Lyapunov function-based analysis that ensures asymptotic stability of the resulting closed-loop tracking error is used to design the proposed Non-linear Proportional and Derivative (NLPD) controller. Numerical simulations are performed using MATLAB/Simulink to show the controllers’ ability to achieve favorable tracking in the presence of the solar background noise within competitive times. Finally, results demonstrate the proposed NLPD controller improves the tracking error performance more than 70% under nominal conditions and 35% with model uncertainties and disturbances compared to the original Proportional and Derivative (PD) strategy.