Evaluation of Forward Error Correction Scheme for Underwater Wireless Optical Communication

The advantage of optical wireless communication of high bandwidth and low cost makes it appeal for underwater communication applications. In this paper, an underwater optical communication system with On-Off Key modulation and forward error correction coding scheme is evaluated. The simulated results show that the bit error rate of RS (Reed-Solomon) code has better performance than BCH (Bose Chaudhuri Hocquenghem) scheme. At the bit error rate of10-5, the signal noise ratio of RS code can be improved around 4dB in comparison with un-coded system. The results suggested that the error control coding technique could be a useful way to improve the reliability of optical communication in unreliable oceanography environment.