The Feasibility of Visible Light Communication for Deep Sea Communication

The oceans cover a vast area of Earth's surface and approximately 80% of the oceans are not explored. Hence, sea exploration has always been an appealing challenge for government agencies, companies, research institutes and other entities alike. Deep sea exploration is of great interest for marine science, seabed mapping, mining operations, and underwater cable operations. One of the biggest challenges in deep sea exploration is the communication among the exploration team. The typical radio communication technologies fail underwater due to the severe attenuation of the salty water. Therefore, other frequency bands such as the visible light spectrum are being trialled for underwater communication. In this regard, this paper presents a visible light communication system that can operate in deep sea conditions. The paper presents a comprehensive communication channel modelling for the midnight zone of the deep sea region and evaluates the performance of the proposed system. Further, the paper proposes a number of network topologies in which the exploration teams can operate and the performance of these topologies are evaluated for using bit error rate. The results suggest that depending on the topology, transmitters with different numbers of LEDs should be used.