Underwater optical camera communications based on a multispectral camera and spectral variations of the LED emission

Abstract

Optical Camera Communication (OCC) applications have intensively used in recent years. Underwater Optical Wireless Communications (UWOC) are one of the most viable alternatives today in underwater environments, compared to traditional acoustic communications or radio communications. UWOC present important and remarkable advantages such as their available bandwidth and the possibility of using COTS devices already present in underwater environments such as LED lighting lamps. This work proposes using a multispectral or hyperspectral camera as an OCC receiver, in short range underwater links, to take advantage of the high spectral resolution of this type of devices regarding conventional cameras. Furthermore, spectral features of the LEDs, usually used as transmitters in OCC, are affected by temperature. Hence, one of the goals of this work is to benefit from those spectral variations that will be grasped by the multispectral camera and thus achieve a new data channel. Therefore, different communication channels could be obtained from a single light source.