Security weaknesses of underwater wireless optical communication.

Abstract

In this work, for the first time, we uncover that the level of security we have traditionally taken for granted on underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) may not always be there. We first numerically investigate the security weaknesses of UWOC via Monte Carlo simulation. With the link distance increasing or the water becoming more turbid, the simulation results indicate that the possibility of information leakage increases, which may pose a great threat to the security of UWOC. By using a high-sensitivity multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) placed aside the water tank, a 5-MHz square wave signal is successfully tapped at 1-m, 3-m, and 5-m underwater transmission distances, which preliminarily verifies the probability of information leakage. We further experimentally demonstrate an UWOC system with potential eavesdropping employing a 2.5-Gb/s orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal. After transmitting through a 15-m underwater channel, the OFDM signal is eavesdropped by a mirror at 7.8 m. Both the normal receiver at 15 m and the eavesdropping receiver at 7.8 m can achieve a bit error rate (BER) below the forward error correction (FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10-3, which validates that UWOC indeed suffers potential safety hazard.