In this work, the effective secrecy throughput (EST) which explicitly captures both the reliability and secrecy features of wiretap channels for an underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) system has been optimized by considering the generalized transmit laser selection (GTLS) scheme. Specifically, the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of the main channel and eavesdropper’s channel is assumed to be unavailable at the transmitter, which is more practical for the underwater application. The fading of salinity induced oceanic turbulence channels is described by the Weibull distribution considering angular pointing error. The GTLS scheme is first introduced into the UWOC eavesdropping system to improve the quality of the main channel. Based on these models, the analytical closed-form expression of the EST with a constraint on the maximum allowed secrecy outage probability (SOP) is mathematically derived in terms of Meijer’s G function and Gauss hypergeometric function. Then, an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the constrained EST of the proposed UWOC system while ensuring wiretap code rate constraints are formulated. To solve this problem, a whale optimization algorithm (WOA) based wiretap code rates optimization method is effectively developed to acquire the maximum constrained EST, which is validated by the exhaustive search (ES) method. Simulation results suggest that the maximum constrained EST of this UWOC system can be significantly improved by the GTLS scheme. Besides, the maximum allowed SOP has a pronounced impact on the maximum constrained EST. The presented results could offer valuable insights into the physical layer security (PLS) performance enhancement of UWOC systems.
