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.