The Evaluation of Modulation Techniques for

Underwater Wireless Optical Communications

Meihong Sui
Key Lab of Submarine Geosciences and Prospecting
Techniques
Ocean University of China
Qingdao China
sui.meihong@yahoo.com.cn
Xinsheng Yu, Fengli Zhang
Key Lab of Submarine Geosciences and Prospecting
Techniques
Ocean University of China
Qingdao China


AbstractCurrently, there are lots of efforts at using
underwater vehicles, gliders and moorings for the spatial
and temporal measurements in oceanography research.
Sensor data collected by these platforms is usually
internally recorded and then transmitted via a cable or
wireless communication. Traditional acoustic links are
fundamentally bandwidth limited to low rates of bit per
second (bps). Optical methods are well posed to provide
an alternative solution for high bandwidth
communications in undersea. In this paper, we examined
several modulation technologies for undersea
environment application. Through modeling and
simulation, the advantages and limitations of these
modulating configurations are discussed. It is
demonstrated that the Pulse Position Modulation (PPM)
is better suited for low powered undersea systems and the
phase shift keying (PSK) yields the best performance in
term of bandwidth and error performance with poor
power efficiency.
Keywords-underwater wireless optical link, optical
channel, modulation techniques; performance evaluation
I. INTRODUCTION
Oceanography is entering a new stage in which the
research and development activity has been extended
from coast to deep-ocean. Therefore, it is desirable to
deploy long term underwater observatory with multi
sensors to monitor the physical, chemical, geological
and biological progress with many spatial and temporal
time scales. To gather data from these facilities is a
crucial task. Although radio frequencies have enjoyed
large success in free space, they experience high
attenuation in water and typically not used for
underwater communication. Acoustic technology has
advantage to transmit data over a long distance in water.
However, the attenuation of the acoustic carrier and the
effects of multi-path reflection will ultimately limit the
data rate and bandwidth for a large amount data
communication and even at the short range the
bandwidth is limited to sub-Mbps. This brings a
"bottleneck" problem for a large amount of data
collection (such as multi-sensor data, image information,
etc.). Wireless optical communication have shown
promise of supporting large bandwidths, high data
transfer rate, small in size, low power consumption,
immune to electromagnetic interference. Thus,
underwater wireless optical communication can be an
alternative method for fast data transmission. By
incorporating optical wireless system into autonomous
underwater vehicle (AUV), we can make use of AUV
to approach to the location of seabed observatories or
mooring systems to gather logged data and then to
transport the data package to research ships within short
range. It provides an alternative solution for real time
data passing and monitoring mission coordination
wirelessly with free swimming underwater vehicle in a
expand distance.
The most common optical communications
modulation scheme used for free space optical link is
on-off key (OOK) and this modulation method has been
usually adopted in underwater wireless optical link due
to its simplicity in system implementation
[1
. While
the other modulation techniques have been studied for
free space optical communication extensively recently,
the feasibility studies of these modulation techniques
for underwater optical channel have been rarely
reported. Compared to atmospheric propagation, ocean
water is more complex medium for light propagation
and communication underwater is very challenging. As
practical underwater systems are constrained in size,
weight and power, some tradeoffs must be considered
in the choice of modulation format for underwater
optical communication system in terms of overall
performance, communication distance and power
consumption. The work reported in this paper attempts
to fill this gap.
,2,3]
In this paper, we evaluated the LED(light Emitting
Diode) based transmitter with direct detection for
realizing modulated optical signal for underwater
communication based on inherent optical properties of
ocean water. The performances of different modulation
schemes for underwater optical channel are investigated.
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
2009 International Conference on Communication Software and Networks
978-0-7695-3522-7/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCSN.2009.97
138
The simulated results of bit error rate, power efficiency,
data rate and implementation complexity is discussed
and compared. It is shown that the pulse-position
modulation (PPM) and phase shift keying (PSK) are
suitable candidates for underwater wireless optical link
applications.
II. CHARACTERISTICS OF |NDERWATER OPTICAL
CHANNEL
The optical properties of sea water are function of
water salinity, water temperature, and concentration of
dissolved organic and inorganic matter, suspended
particles and organisms. The attenuation of the light
beam in sea water is much more serious than in the
atmosphere. Lighting power attenuated in water is
mainly dominated by wavelength dependent processes:
absorption and scattering. The main cause of light
absorption in water is excitation of vibration state of
the water molecule by photons and other dissolved
particles and detritus. Scattering of light refers to
processes in which the direction of the photon is
changed and it can take place either on molecules or on
dissolved particulate. In the literature, absorption and
scattering coefficients are extensively used to
characterize the light transmission and the attenuation
coefficient ( )
T
K is defined as :
] 4 [
( ) ( ) ( )
T A S
K K K = + (1)
Where ( )
A
K is the total absorption coefficient
and ( ) K
s
is total scattering coefficient.
The light power of the receiver end after transmitted
at a distance r can be expressed as follows:
( )
2 2
T
R T
A K r
P e P
r

t u

~ ?
where A is the area of the reception, u is beam
divergence angle, is transmitting power,
T
P ( )
T
K is
the total diffuse attenuation coefficient for spectral
irradiance. In this work, the total diffuse attenuation
coefficient ( )
T
K were assumed to be influenced by
the chlorophyll so that the attenuation was re-written as
following:
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
T w CDOM chl d
K K K K K = + + + (3)
Where, ( )
W
K ( ) is the spectral irradiance
attenuation coefficient for clear ocean waters,
1
m

( )
CDOM
K ( ) is the spectral irradiance
attenuation coefficient for colored dissolved organic
matter, which usually named yellow substance.
1
m

( )
chl
K ( (mg pigment ) is the specific
spectral irradiance attenuation coefficient due to
chlorophyll-like pigments,
1
m
3
m

( )
d
K is the spectral
irradiance attenuation coefficient for drossy.
According to [12], and combined with [5], the total
attenuation coefficient can be defined as :
1
4.322
1.7
0.3
( ) ( ) ( ) 62.6039 exp(0.12327 0.0189 )
3.6402 exp(0.12343 0.01105 ) 0.005826(400/ )
0.01739 exp(0.11631 ) 1.151302(400/ )
0.76284 exp(0.03092 ) 0.341074(400/ )
T w c c c
c c
c c
c c
K a a C C C
C C
C C
C C

= + +
+ +
+
+
1
c
C < (4)
2
4.322
1.7
0.3
( ) ( ) ( ) 62.6039 exp(0.12327 0.0189 )
3.6402 exp(0.12343 0.01105 ) 0.005826(400/ )
0.01739 exp(0.11631 ) 1.151302(400/ )
0.76284 exp(0.03092 ) 0.341074(400/ )
T w c c c
c c
c c
c c
K a a C C C
C C
C C
C C

= + +
+ +
+
+
1
c
C > (5)
c
C (mg pigment
3
m

) is the average concentration

of Chl a and bio-pigments in the ocean water to a depth
of 1 attenuation length.
The assumption was made that the chlorophyll
was distributed homogeneously throughout the water
column, and the transmission distance r is 10m.
According to equations (4) and (5), we analyzed the
affects of attenuation coefficient at different
chlorophyll concentration on visible light theoretically
and the results are shown in figure 1and 2. It is
indicated that with different wavelengths of light, the
transmission characteristic is diverse when transmitting
in different chlorophyll concentration.
Figure 1. Chlorophyll concentration of less than 1, the optical
power of different wavelengths
139 139 139 139 139 139

Figure 2. Chlorophyll concentration of more than 1, the optical power of
different wavelengths
From the figures above we can see when chlorophyll
concentration is lower than 1, the blue, green and cyan
spectrum have a better communication window, but when
in high concentration chlorophyll, the attenuation effect on
blue, green and cyan light becomes serious. And the red
spectrum has better characteristic in high chlorophyll
concentration.
III. MODULATION SCHEME FOR WIRELESS OPTICAL
COMMUNICATIONS
The common modulation schemes used for underwater
environment are intensity modulation and direct detection.
The optical power is controlled to change the pulse rate,
width, frequency and location. The basic modulation
techniques for optical wireless system uses non-coherent
detection methods that only the presence or absence of
power is ascertained and no phase information is recovered,
such as amplitude shift keying (ASK), and 2ASK also
named On-Off Keying (OOK), pulse position modulation
(PPM), the differentially coherent or coherent techniques,
for example frequency shift keying (FSK) and phase shift
keying (PSK), needs further phase symbols comparison.
ASK, OOK and PPM modulation formats are typically
used in a simple direct detection scheme and can be
implemented at lower complexity. For the FSK and PSK
modulation schemes, they can be implemented by using
interferometers in conjunction with balanced optical
receivers. Table ! compares the selected modulation
schemes described above.
TABLE I. DIGITAL OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS MODULATION FORMAT
IV. EVALUATION OF MODULATION TECHNIQUE FOR
|NDERWATER OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS
For the underwater optical channel, the quality of
received signals is affected by two factors. One is caused by
water medium during light transmission; the other is
additive white Gaussian noise . The choice of modulation
technique for real time applications needs to tradeoff the
signal to noise ratio (SNR), power performance and
bandwidth efficiency.
] 6 [
A. Signal to noise ratio for underwater channel
In this study, compared some different wavelength
(660nm, 530nm, 505nm, 470nm), and taking the
transmitted output power u: 136 mW with the divergence
angle of 0.6 mrad. Using the S5493-01 photodiode
produced by Hamamatsu Company as the receiver.
Therefore, the signal to noise ratio at the receiver is given
by the following formulae
[7]
.

( )
2
8
GP A K r
r t r T
S e
r hc R
w
q
t

=
(b),
Where
r
q is the detector quantum efficiency, G is the
photo multiplication gain of the detector, is the
transmitted power of the LED, A is the area of the
t
P
r

Modulation format Threshold Complexity of
implementation
OOK
1
( )
0 0
i
s
p t

Half of the amplitude low
FSK
1
( ) ( ) c o s ( )
0
M
p t A g t t
j j
j
e

=
=

No need to set high
PSK
1
( ) ( ) cos( )
0
M
p t A g t t
j j
e
j
u

= + A
=

The phase in one symbol compared to the phase in
the previous symbol
middle
L-
PPM
[ 1] / , /
0
i t m T L mT L
s f f
p
m
another
e

{1, 2, ... } m L e
k( 0 1 k s s times of the amplitude, selected
based on specific value of L
lower
140 140 140 140 140 140
receiving aperture, R is the data rate, r is the transmission
distance, h is Planck constant , ( )
T
K is the total diffuse
attenuation coefficient for spectral irradiance at 0.01
c
C = .
The results of the relationship between transmission
distance and signal to noise ratio as the prerequisite at
different chlorophyll concentration is showed in Figure 3.
Because we just study the optical transmission with blue
light for more than 10m, we only consider the SNR between
-10dB and 30dB in the rest of study.

Figure 3. For different attenuation coefficient, the relationship between
transmission distance and the channel SNR
B. Error Probability performance Evaluation
Most of optical wireless communications to date have
made use of a simple OOK in direct detection scheme. For
OOK demodulation format, it is used to compare the
received voltage with the threshold to decide"1" or "0" .
In an AWGN channel model, the received voltage
is , is Gaussian process. For the
data bit "1", the probability density of
is
] 8 [
( ) "1"
( )
"0"
( )
i n t
s c
p t
n
c t
+

) (t c
n
) (t x
1
2 2
( ) exp[ ( ) / 2 ]
1
2
p x x i
s
o
t o
=
, and for the data
bit "0", the probability density of
is ) (t x
1
2 2
( ) exp[ / 2 ]
0
2
p x x o
to
=
. If the judgment threshold
is set as
s
i
2
1
, the bit error rate is defined as following:
1 1
( ) (
( )
2 2 2 2 2 2
i
S
s
P erfc erfc
e ook
o
= = ) ()
According to [8], in additive Gaussian white noise
channel, the bit error rate of 2FSK coherent modulation and
2DPSK coherent modulation are given by following
equations:
1
( )
2 4
S
P erf
e FSK
=
1
(1 )
( )
2 2 2
S S
P erfc erfc
e DPSK
=
(9)
For the L-PPM modulation in the Gaussian white noise
channel, there are many performance evaluation methods
for the bit error rate . In this paper, the evaluation of
BER is defined according to :
] 11 , 10 , 9 [
[9]
1 1 1 1
[ ( ) (
( )
2 2 2 2 2 2
k L k
P er )] fc LS erfc L
e L PPM
L
S

= +

(!0)
As the performance of BER is depended on the
threshold value , we evaluated the different k values and
the result for 4 PPM and 8 PPM is showed in Figure 3. It
can be seen from Figure 4 that when the k value is from
0.45 to 0.65, the error rate research low. Thus, the k= 0.5 is
used in the rest of study.
s
ki

Figure 4. The relationship between BER and different k values
We simulate the bit error rate with different modulation
format at the different SNR condition and 4 PPM and 8
PPM is employed for PPM scheme. The numerical
simulations of the performance of these modulation
schemes for undersea communication are depicted in Figure
5. It is shown that the 2DPSK and 8PPM offer the better
performance than other modulation techniques.

Figure 5. The BER performance of different modulation schemes with
SNR
C. Data rate and power
For underwater optical communications applications,
the system is powered by its own batteries. In order to
improve underwater system performance, it is desirable to
make the system as small and light as possible. Much like
radio frequency communication systems, the power
c (8)
141 141 141 141 141 141
performance and data transfer efficiency is also main
consideration of the choice of modulation techniques for
underwater optical communication systems.
A frequency shift key (FSK) modulator generates a
specific frequency carrier wave for digital "1", and a
different frequency carrier wave for digital "0", The
deficiency of FSK for underwater application is the optical
transmit power required as the transmitting duration is
always on.
Although PSK modulation is good at bit error rate and
bandwidth, but PSK modulator generate an in phase signal
for digital "1", and an out of phase signal for a digital "0".
The difference coherent demodulations are needed to
compare the current phase with the previous phase. Thus,
PSK demodulators are complex and power inefficient for
embedded system of underwater applications.
Although there is no full use of the frequency or phase
information in OOK and PPM modulation, the design of
receiver and transmitter circuit is simple and it is suitable
for the underwater equipment integration. The data
throughput of PPM modulation is smaller than OOK
modulation, but the required receive power is just
1
log
2
2
L
L
of OOK modulation at the same error rate
performance. It means that PPM could transmit longer
distance than OOK at the same transmitting power
condition. Let P represent the smallest pulse width, the
comparison of different modulation techniques is shown in
table ?.
TABLE II. THE SIMPLE CONTRAST OF TRANSFER RATE AND
IMPLEMENTATION COMPLEXITY

OOK FSK DPSK 4-
PPM
8-PPM
Maximum
rate
1/(2P) 1/(2P) 1/(2P) (1/2P) (3/8P)
Transmit
power
Middle Higher Highest Low Lowest
Complexity
of
modulation
Low Higher Highest Lower Lower
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we evaluated the performance of different
modulation schemes for underwater optical wireless
communication with marine bio-optical model. The
simulation results show that the red light has better
transmission characteristics in waters with higher
chlorophyll concentration. It is suggested that for
underwater application, it is required to trade off the water
property and wavelength to improve the communication
efficiency.
Although most reported underwater communication
works use OOK modulation technique because of its
simplicity for implementation, our simulated results argue
that OOK has the disadvantages in power efficiency and
control capacity of the error rate for underwater optical
channel. DPSK has good error control capability and high
bandwidth, but due to the using of optical interferometer in
receiving system, it consumes large power and more
complex to implement in embedded device. As the
transmitter in a FSK system is always on, the power
consumption is relatively higher than other techniques and it
is undesirable option for undersea optical system. In
consideration of bit error rate performance, bandwidth
required and the optical power in underwater optical
wireless applications, and also implementation complexity,
we have shown that the PPM modulation technique is a
good option for designing underwater optical wireless
system. In order to achieve lower error rate performance,
one can increase the value of L. For high bandwidth
application, the improve PPM modulation such as DPPM
can be used to increase its bandwidth performance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We are grateful for the support of National "863" Hi-
Tech program under grant number 2006AA09Z177.

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