Background Noise Resistant Underwater Wireless Optical Communication Using Faraday Atomic Line Laser and Filter

High sensitive underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) in shallow water or FSO-UWOC convergent applications suffers severely from solar noise and other background noise interference. This paper presents experimental demonstrations of broadband background noise resistant air-water and underwater wireless optical communication by using a pair of spectrum matched 852 nm Cs atomic Faraday line laser and filter, with a narrow passband of only 1 GHz. Experimental results show that by using the Faraday atomic line laser and filter, the Q factor can be improved by 3.37 dB compared to using the interference filter, and 14.67 dB compared to system without using noise resistant filter. A numerical model for UWOC system performance affected by broadband background noise with various filtering conditions is presented, where both the numerical and experimental results match each other quite well. Based on the experimental results substantiated model, performance of UWOC under solar noise interference is numerically studied. The numerical results show that under strong solar noise interference, the maximum depth of the receiver is extended from 0.77 m to 3.79 m for FSO-UWOC system and from 0.87 m to 3.54 m for UWOC system. It proves that FADOF can provide considerable performance improvement for both UWOC and FSO-UWOC system with broadband background noise interferences.

Automated summary

This paper presents experimental demonstrations of broadband background noise resistant air-water and underwater wireless optical communication. The results show that the use of specific laser and filter can improve system performance and extend the depth of the receiver under solar noise interference. The findings highlight the importance of broadband background noise resistance for underwater optical communication systems.