Water covers 71% of the Earth’s surface, where the steady increase in oceanic activities has promoted the need for reliable maritime communication technologies. The existing maritime communication systems involve terrestrial, aerial, and space networks. This article presents a holistic overview of the different forms of maritime communications and provides the latest advances in various marine technologies. This article first introduces the different techniques used for maritime communications over the radio frequency (RF) and optical bands. Then, we present the channel models for RF and optical bands, modulation and coding schemes, coverage and capacity, and radio resource management in maritime communications. After that, this article presents some emerging use cases of maritime networks, such as the Internet of Ships and the ship-to-underwater Internet of Things. Finally, we highlight a few exciting open challenges and identify a set of future research directions for maritime communication, including bringing broadband connectivity to the deep sea, using terahertz and visible light signals for on-board applications, and data-driven modeling for radio and optical marine propagation.

Underwater optical wireless communication is an emerging field that can provide reliable connectivity for future generation Internet of Underwater Things devices. In this article, we propose a communication system based on single and superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian modes to transfer information and rely on a convolutional neural network for the mode identification in an underwater environment. A 100% recovery fidelity is reported at clear and turbid water. Beyond 90% of identification, accuracy is achieved under different laboratory-emulated underwater turbulence conditions. The practical implementation of the proposed spatial-mode-based communication scheme is further discussed.

This paper proposes a unified statistical channel model to characterize the atmospheric turbulence induced distortions faced by orbital angular momentum (OAM) in free space optical (FSO) communication systems. In this channel model, the self-channel irradiance of OAM modes as well as crosstalk irradiances between different OAM modes are characterized by a Generalized Gamma distribution (GGD). The latter distribution is shown to provide an excellent match with simulated data for all regimes of atmospheric turbulence. Therefore, it can be used to overcome the computationally complex numerical simulations to model the propagation of OAM modes through atmospheric turbulent FSO channels. The GGD allows obtaining very simple tractable closed-form expressions for a variety of performance metrics. Indeed, the average capacity, the bit-error rate, and the outage probability are derived for FSO systems using single OAM mode transmission with direct detection. Furthermore, we extend our study to FSO systems using OAM mode diversity to improve the performance. By using a maximum ratio combining (MRC) at the receiver, the GGD is also shown to fit the simulated combined received optical powers. Finally, space-time (ST) coding is proposed to provide diversity and multiplexing gains, and the error probability is theoretically derived under the newly proposed generic model.

In this paper, we investigate the impact of the wavelength and the water turbidity on the performance of non-line-of-sight underwater communication links. Using the chlorophyll-based model proposed in [1], we demonstrate the variability of the scattering and absorption properties for a given wavelength with respect to the water turbidity level. To facilitate the use of this model in Monte Carlo simulations, we approximate the phase function by a two-term Henyey Greenstein function. The obtained phase function as well as the absorption and scattering coefficients of this model are then injected to Monte Carlo simulations to assess the path loss performance. Interestingly, we show by simulations that water turbidity, often regarded as a limiting performance factor, can lead to better received power in non-line of sight environments.

A unified statistical model is proposed to characterize turbulence-induced fading in underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) channels in the presence of air bubbles and temperature gradient for fresh and salty waters, based on experimental data. In this model, the channel irradiance fluctuations are characterized by the mixture exponential-generalized gamma (EGG) distribution. We use the expectation-maximization algorithm to obtain the maximum likelihood parameter estimation of the new model. Interestingly, the proposed model is shown to provide a perfect fit with the measured data under all channel conditions for both types of water. The major advantage of the new model is that it has a simple mathematical form making it attractive from a performance analysis point of view. Indeed, we show that the application of the EGG model leads to closed-form and analytically tractable expressions for key UWOC system performance metrics such as the outage probability, the average bit-error rate, and the ergodic capacity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever comprehensive channel model addressing the statistics of optical beam irradiance fluctuations in underwater wireless optical channels due to both air bubbles and temperature gradient.

A novel statistical model is proposed to characterize turbulence-induced fading in underwater wireless optical channels in the presence of air bubbles for fresh and salty waters, based on experimental data. In this model, the channel irradiance fluctuations are characterized by the mixture Exponential-Gamma distribution. We use the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to obtain the maximum likelihood parameter estimation of the new model. Interestingly, the proposed model is shown to provide a perfect fit with the measured data under all the channel conditions for both types of water. The major advantage of the new model is that it has a simple mathematical form making it attractive from a performance analysis point of view. Indeed, the application of the Exponential-Gamma model leads to closed-form and analytically tractable expressions for key system performance metrics such as the outage probability and the average bit-error rate.

Indoor visible light communication (VLC) systems are now possible because of advances in light emitting diode and laser diode technologies. These lighting technologies provide the foundation for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) data transmission through visible light. However, the channel matrix can be strongly correlated in indoor MIMO-VLC systems, preventing parallel data streams from being decoded. Here, in 2 × 2 MIMO-VLC systems, we describe a mirror diversity receiver (MDR) design that reduces the channel correlation by both blocking the reception of light from one specific direction and improving the channel gain from light from another direction by utilizing a double-sided mirror deployed between the receiver's photodetectors. We report on the channel capacity of the MDR system and the optimal height of its mirrors in terms of maximum channel capacity. We also derived analytic results on the effect of rotation on MDR's performance. Based on numerical and experimental results, we show that the double-sided mirror has both constructive and destructive effects on the channel matrix. Our design can be used with previously described non-imaging systems to improve the performance of indoor VLC systems.