Multihop Underwater Optical Wireless Links with Chromatic Dispersion and Time Jitter

Abstract

During the last few years, the need for high performance and security in communication systems, have set the underwater optical wireless communications (UOWC) as a very effective solution. Such systems can provide high bit rates with low installation and operational cost but on the other hand, oceanic environment affects the performance and an UOWC system as the beam that propagates through the seawater suffers from group velocity dispersion (GVD) that causes pulse broadening. Furthermore, the system is also affected by time jitter due to errors of synchronization between the transceivers. In order to achieve an acceptable performance, the distance between the receiver and the transmitter has to be relatively short. An effective technique to increase the link distance is the use of serial nodes deploying a multihop system. In this work, the availability and the performance of an UOWC multihop system will be investigated under the effect of GVD and time jitter. More specifically, closed form mathematical expression will be extracted for the maximum bit rate and the probability of fade, and the corresponding results will be presented.