Performance of Underwater Optical Communication with Solar Interference Mitigation

Underwater optical wireless communication has risen as a promising technology to realize high-rate links supporting many different activities and applications. Differently from acoustic communication representing the most effective transmission method in underwater environment, optical signaling suffers from the effect of sunlight, acting as interference and potentially degrading the link performance. In this regard, our paper investigates the reliability of an underwater optical communication in presence of solar interference. Specifically, we propose a novel mechanism for joint channel and solar interference estimation, driving signal detection at the receiver. Performance are evaluated for different modulation schemes, and the results demonstrate the importance of an accurate sunlight interference estimation and rejection in order to achieve good robustness to detection errors.