16.6 Gbps data rate for underwater wireless optical transmission with single laser diode achieved with discrete multi-tone and post nonlinear equalization.

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate a 450-nm laser underwater wireless optical transmission system by using adaptive bit-power loading discrete multi-tone (DMT) and Volterra series based post nonlinear equalization. Post nonlinear equalization mitigates the nonlinear impairment of the UWOC system. By incorporating post nonlinear equalization with a 3rd-order diagonal plane kernel, the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be improved by ~2 dB compared with a linear equalization method. The measured transmission capacity of the UWOC system is 16.6 Gbps over 5 m, 13.2 Gbps over 35 m, and 6.6 Gbps over 55 m tap water channel, with bit error rates (BERs) below the standard hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) limit of 3.8 × 10-3. The used electrical signal bandwidth is 2.75 GHz, corresponding to electrical spectrum efficiency of ∼6 bit/s/Hz. The distance-datarate product reaches 462 Gbps*m at 35 m tap water transmission. To the best of our knowledge, both the data rate and distance-data rate product are the largest reported for single laser diode.