LightByte: Communicating Wirelessly with an Underwater Robot using Light

摘要

Communication with and control of underwater autonomous vehicles is complicated by the nature of the water medium which absorbs radio waves over short distances and which introduces severe limitations on the bandwidth of sound-based technologies. Given the limitations of acoustic and radio frequency (RF) communication underwater, light-based communication has also been used. Light-based communication is also emerging as an effective strategy for terrestrial communication. Can the emerging Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) communication standard be exploited underwater to enable devices in close proximity to communicate by light? This paper describes the development of the LightByte Li-Fi model for underwater use and experimental evaluation of its performance both terrestrially and underwater.