Underwater wireless optical communication is facing absorption, scattering problems, which, in principle, can be greatly resolved by underwater photon-counting communication (UPCC) technology that exhibits high-sensitivity communication characteristics in long-range underwater wireless optical communication. Recent studies on UPCC are mainly focused on a single intensity modulation such as on–off keying (OOK) and pulse position modulation (PPM) technologies, and the comprehensive analysis of communication performance combing OOK modulation and digital pulse modulations remains a lack. To this, by using a UPCC system based on a single-photon avalanche diode, we reveal the communication performances of OOK, PPM, differential pulse interval modulation (DPIM), differential pulse position modulation (DPPM), and dual-header pulse interval modulation, and find that (1) the PPM has the longest transmission distance at the same bit error ratio when M > 2, but the lowest communication rate under identical modulation bandwidth and average transmit power; and (2) the DPPM and DPIM perform the optimum communication performance at the fixed communication rate when M = 8. We thus conclude that the DPPM and DPIM have advantages of low modulation bandwidth and long time slot time compared with PPM, indicating the significance of reducing the difficulty of signal synchronization and the complexity of the underwater photon-counting system accordingly.

High-capacity, long-distance underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) technology is an important component in building fast, flexible underwater sensing networks. Underwater communication with light as a carrier has a large communication capacity, but channel loss induced by light attenuation and scattering largely limits the underwater wireless optical communication distance. To improve the communication distance, a low-power 450 nm blue continuous wave (CW) laser diode (LD)-based UWOC system was proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A communication link was designed and constructed with a BER of 3.6 × 10−3 in a total link loss of 80.72 dB in c = 0.51 m−1 water with a scintillation index (S.I.) equal to 0.02 by combining with 32-pulse-position modulation (32-PPM) at a bandwidth of 12.5 MHz and single photon counting reception techniques. The allowable underwater communication distance in Jerlov II (c = 0.528 m−1) water was estimated to be 35.64 m. The attenuation lengths were 18.82, which were equal at link distances of 855.36 m in Jerlov I (c = 0.022 m−1) water. A receiving sensitivity of 0.34 photons/bit was achieved. To our knowledge, this is the lowest receiving sensitivity ever reported under 0.1 dB of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the field of UWOC.

Underwater wireless optical communication, which is an effective technical way to build a high-speed and flexible underwater wireless communication network due to its large bandwidth, good confidentiality and low time delay, is widely regarded as a complementary communication way to hydroacoustic communication. The newest research progress and main technical specification in the current technology of underwater wireless optical communication are introduced, the characteristics of the current underwater wireless optical communication technology are summarized in this paper. A series of improvement measures are proposed for the problems of short communication distance and low robustness in underwater wireless optical communication system, which can provide references for underwater wireless optical communication technology research and engineering project development.