Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is a promising technology that can be a candidate to improve the communication capacity and speed in aquatic media. The aim of this study is to examine the performance of a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) UWOC system. A SiPM is a modern solid-state photodetector with extremely high sensitivity up to the single-photon level or a photon-counting ability, which helps in detecting extremely weak light signals after long-distance underwater channel attenuation. We clarify the basic characteristics and photon-counting detection mode of a SiPM. In particular, the photocount of a SiPM is approximated by a Gaussian distribution, and theoretical analysis shows that only 13.3 photons need to be detected during “1” symbol period to achieve a bit error rate of 10−3 in an ambient light environment. Moreover, a SiPM also has a better analog mode detection ability than an avalanche photodiode (APD) and realizes 2 Mbps analog communication owing to its unique array structure and high photon detection efficiency. Furthermore, MIMO, i.e., spatial diversity, is applied as an effective method to relax the link alignment, improve the system performance, and alleviate the effect of optical turbulence. In our experiment, with a photon-counting 6×3 MIMO scheme, an energy per bit of 7.38×10−9 J/bit is achieved at a scintillation index of 4.66×10−3 in a 10 m water tank with 1 Mbps on-off-keying (OOK) modulation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on a MIMO-UWOC system based on the photon-counting mode of a SiPM array. This UWOC system combines the advantages of SiPMs and the MIMO scheme and has the potential to realize long-distance UWOC under optical turbulence.
Underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) is a promising means of realizing large capacity and high rate in aquatic media. In this paper, a photomultiplier tube (PMT)-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) UWOC system is investigated. Photon counting is an effective technique used to detect very low-level light. A PMT with an excellent photon-counting mode is adopted, and the performance in terms of the bit error rate is discussed. The received optical power can be predicted based on the detected photocount in each symbol period, and the received photocount distribution may be simulated through MATLAB. Furthermore, the optical link model and energy per bit with on-off keying are evaluated for different water types at a 10 m optical link distance. This MIMO-UWOC system combines the advantages of PMTs and the MIMO scheme and has the potential to realize long-distance optical link transmission.
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