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Design and implementation of HDL modules and circuits for underwater

optical wireless communication

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 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

Design and Implementation of HDL Modules and Circuits for

Underwater Optical Wireless Communication
Davide Anguita, Davide Brizzolara, Giancarlo Parodi
University of Genova
Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engineering
Via Opera Pia 11A, Genova
ITALY
{Davide.Anguita, Davide.Brizzolara, Giancarlo.Parodi}@unige.it
www.smartlab.dibe.unige.it

Abstract: Underwater wireless optical communication has been used for establish a link between mobile vehi-
cles and/or fixed nodes because light, especially in the blue/green region, allows to achieve higher data-rate than
acoustical or electromagnetic waves for moderate distances. The here proposed work has the aim to pave the way
for diffuse optical communication allowing to support optical communication in an Underwater Wireless Sensor
Network of dense-deployed fixed nodes for specific application, such as monitoring and surveillance, for shallow,
coastal and inland water in the case of moderate/limited area. The use of light impulse for communication is
motivated by the possibility of targeting high data-rate, low-cost and small dimension components. This paper
describes an overall vision of the system: a HDL implementation of flexible modules for the management of op-
tical communication (based on IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 standard) which target the interface with current
terrestrial technology for Wireless Sensor Networks; the design and implementation of circuits for underwater
optical point-to-point and planar communication. The preliminary results and design consideration are reported
considering also future possible developments.

Key–Words: Underwater Wireless Communication, Optical Communication, Physical (PHY) Layer, Medium Ac-
cess Control (MAC) Layer

1 Introduction munication, which target the integration of existing

available terrestrial technologies for WSN with op-
The growing need for underwater systems applied to tical circuits specifically implemented to support the
observation and monitoring has considerably stimu- generation and reception of light impulses.
lated the interest in advancing the technologies for The use of the alternative solution of optical com-
underwater wireless communication applied both for munication, despite reaching shorter distances be-
point-to-point communication than to support Under- cause of attenuation and scattering, reduces the prob-
water Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) [1]. lem of low-speed diffusion and low data-rate of acous-
The Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) paradigm, tical signals. Optical underwater communication has
where miniaturized nodes cooperate to build a dis- been investigated considering:
tributed network for sensing the environment, has
greatly improved terrestrial technologies in the last • the high data-rate, which can range from Mb/s to
few years but it is difficult to transfer most of the Gb/s, if laser is employed;
know-how developed for terrestrial devices to their
underwater counterparts due to the particular charac- • the possibility of using relatively low-power
teristics of underwater world. In particular, wireless components and circuits equipped with LEDs
underwater communication still pose a wide range of and photodiodes;
problems [3]: the use of acoustic communication is
the most common but it has low data-rate, high power • the possibility of targeting relatively small di-
consumption and problems related to low propagation mensions and low costs for the communication
speed. The work presented in this paper explores the system;
possibility of using optical communication in Under-
water Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) by design- This paper is organized as follows: a brief
ing flexible modules, devoted to manage optical com- overview of the main aspects of underwater optical

ISSN: 1790-5117 132 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

communication and applications of an optical UWSN, monitoring and surveillance. Small dimensions and
a presentation of the current developed modules and low-cost components allow to establish a dense de-
circuits followed by conclusion and future develop- ployed networks performing an effective fine grained
ments. sampling in the area of interest. It could be possi-
ble, for instance, to perform pollution monitoring and
frequent data collection (water temperature, specific
2 Optical Wireless Underwater conductivity, pH, turbidity, and possibly oxygen con-
Communication centration) and, by using a high-data rate optical link,
periodically deliver data reducing the time devoted to
Due to the impossibility of using Radio Frequencies transmission and network congestion.
(RF), traditionally wireless underwater communica-
tion employs acoustic waves because sound propa-
gates well in water and its range can be very long 4 System Description
(∼km). However, it has several disadvantages such as
narrow bandwidth and latency in communication due 4.1 Design Consideration
to the slow speed of acoustic wave in water. For in- Currently the PHY Layer and a functions subset of
stance, at ranges of less than 100 m the data transmis- the MAC Layer have been described by using an
sion rates of these systems in shallow littoral waters Hardware Description Language (HDL), in particular
are ∼10 kb/s. VHDL (Very High Speed Hardware Description Lan-
Experimental tests have shown that an alterna- guage), as suggested in [4] [5] .
tive feasible solution is optical communication espe-
cially in blue/green light wavelengths, even if lim- P ro c e s s in g M e m o ry
ited to short distances (up to 100 m)[3]. Compared
C o m m u n ic a tio n
to acoustic communication it offers a practical choice F P G A /
for high-bandwidth communication and it propagates u P A S IC
faster in the water (2.255 x 108 ). S e n so rs
Nevertheless it is affected by different factors to
take into account for an efficient design [7]. The at-
tenuation of a light beam between two points can be P o w e r U n it
described as in 1 where d1 and d2 are the positions of
the points. Figure 1: WSN node overview
2
d1

A = e−k(d1 −d2 ) (1) The system then has been interfaced to a software for
d2 testing purposes. The description of each module has
In the first term, k is defined as k = a(λ) + b(λ) and it been carried out by using an Hardware Description
is dependent by the wavelength: a is the term related Language because:
to the absorption of water while b models the scatter-
ing which depends both on light wavelength and tur- 1. it could easily integrated in WSN nodes (Figure
bidity. The second term, instead, models the quadratic 1) developed for terrestrial application equipped
attenuation. by a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA),
such as the one developed by the WISE Labora-
tory at DIBE [6];
3 Applications
2. it could be used for the implementation of an
Optical underwater communication is an effective al- ASIC/ASIP specifically devoted to manage op-
ternative to current underwater technology especially tical communication. In this case the implemen-
in some particular environments such as, for instance, tation of a prototype on FPGA is to be consid-
shallow, coastal and fresh inland waters where the use ered as a passage for simulation and optimization
of this approach is useful to overcome all the short- whose aim is then to build a specific CHIP for the
comings related to the use of acoustic communica- management of the optical communication.
tion and to allow a wide adoption of underwater mon-
itoring systems [9][3]. In particular the possibility of The design approach has been bottom-up, starting
transferring high amount of data in a limited amount from the management of the circuits for transmission
of time reducing power consumption can support the and reception to the MAC Layer, and based on a mod-
transmission of short video and pictures for a reliable ular approach. The here proposed work targets the

ISSN: 1790-5117 133 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

interface with current terrestrial technologies and it is to decode the following PPM transmission. The re-
inspired to IEEE 802.15.4 for WSN and IEEE 802.11, ceiver detects the modulation (4 or 16 PPM) and per-
which supports an optical PHY Layer based on In- forms also a clock correction in order to maintain syn-
fraRed (IR) [8]. chronization.
The Physical Layer Management Entity
Software Interface (PLME) provides the layer management service
interfaces through which layer management functions
may be invoked.
MAC Layer - HDL implementation The Physical Data (PD) service enables the
transmission and reception of PHY protocol data units
CSMA/CA CRC
(PPDUs) across the physical channel.
Control Unit Packet Parsing
4.3 Medium Access Control Design
The MAC Layer hardware design is based on a mod-
PLME PD ular approach similar to that used for PHY Layer im-
plementation. The MAC Layer handles the access to
PHY Layer - HDL implementation
the PHY Layer through the PD and the PLME, while it
Transmitter Receiver manages different services for the Upper Layers, sim-
ilarly to the PLME in the PHY Layer.

Clock CCAreq
Optical circuits for Tx and Rx
Reset Counter BoExp
maxBE
Figure 2: HDL modules overview CSMA/CA BoNum
maxBC fsm
Random
It is a preliminary step since it supplies a hardware CCAres Gen CCAsuc
structure which can be, if necessary, easily adapted to
different systems or integrated with additional func-
tions for different standards and protocols. This flex- Figure 3: CSMA-CA implementation
ibility is based on a modular design and well defined
interfaces between each modules. Currently the following functions have been imple-
mented:
4.2 Physical Layer Structure 1. Packet parsing and addresses verification;
The PHY Layer structure, depicted in Figure 2, is
composed of 4 modules as well detailed in [10], in- 2. Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC): to check the
spired to IEEE 802.15.4. integrity of transferred data;
The Transmitter generates the transmission on
3. a module to manage the transmission and recep-
the physical channel managing a LED circuit. It can
tion of the MAC Payload to the upper layer;
generate a synchronization signal or a transmission
signal based on PPM modulation in which bits are en- 4. the CSMA/CA mechanism for channel access.
coded by the position of the light pulse in time slots.
The duration of the time slot is fixed by the value The competition for channel access is based on a
of the input prescaler and the modulation can be a CSMA/CA protocol in which a device, when it wishes
4 or 16 PPM. This choice of PPM is based on the to transmit data, waits for a random number of back-
evaluation of the performance of different modulation off periods before detecting the channel. If the chan-
schemes for underwater optical wireless communica- nel is busy, the device increases the number of at-
tion, as well reported in [9]. tempts by one and checks if the maximum number of
The Receiver manages the output of the receiver attempts has been reached. If the limit is exceeded,
circuit. It has been designed to synchronize automati- the device generates a channel access error and reports
cally with the transmitter baud rate: it determines how this event to upper layers. If the number of attempts is
many clock cycles is the duration of the time slot cho- below the limit, the device repeats this procedure un-
sen by the transmitter by counting 32 transitions of the til it access the channel successfully or the number of
input. This value is the output prescaler and it is used attempts exceeds the limit.

ISSN: 1790-5117 134 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

Figure 4: User interface to optical PHY and MAC Layers

Module Slices % a diffuse optical communication which could support

PHY Layer 750 39 a dense network of small nodes able to exchange data
Trasmitter 154 8 at high data-rate (in the order of Mb/s). In general our
Receiver 231 12 approach has focused the possibility of using low-cost
PLME 173 9 and low-power components.
In the next paragraph a point-to-point transceiver
PD 192 10
is described and then a 2-d structure for planar com-
MAC Layer 305 16 munication is proposed.
CSMA-CA 190 10 For point-to-point transceiver tests have been per-
others 115 6 formed both in air than underwater by using a specif-
ically designed tank. The tank (Figure 5) consists of
Table 1: Implementation on Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA a 2 meters long waterproof pipe built of high-density
polyethylene black plastic.
The previous described mechanism has been im-
plemented in hardware by using a dedicated module 6.1 Point-to-point communication
composed by a random number generator, for the cal-
culation of the random delay, a counter and an other The transmitter generates an impulse of light of a fixed
module, based on a FSM, to manage the CSMA/CA duration (250 ns) which allows to support a transmis-
algorithm as depicted in Figure 3. sion at 1Mb/s in the case of an 16-PPM modulation or
at 2Mb/s in the case of a 4-PPM. The choice of LED
wavelength has been done to maximize the power of
5 Implementation received signal as illustrated below (Figure 6).
The previous described modules have been synthe- Particular attention has been posed on the circuit
sized and implemented on a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA for the reception, since the reciprocal distance of the
and a dedicated program in C# is used to manage the underwater devices cannot be fixed in advance and the
interface to the Digilent Spartan 3 Board: it allows to receiver has to maintain his functioning in all the cov-
perform tests of transmission and set different param- erage area of the transmitter.
eters of the PHY and MAC Layer (Figure 4). The receiver has been designed considering dif-
The VHDL description is developed in generic ferent blocks: a photodiode; a transresistance ampli-
standard VHDL and it is planned an integration in fier, to have a conversion from current to voltage; a
a WSN node by using an Actel IGLOO low-power bandpass filter to eliminate noise below 10 kHz and
FPGA which appears to be an effective solution for above 20 MHz; an Automatic Gain Control (AGC),
its low-power and reduced costs. based on a Linear Technology LT1006, used to am-
In Table 1 the results of the implementation on plify the signal received by the first part of the circuit
Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA are reported in terms of slices. and to automatically increase or decrease the gain ac-
The maximum frequency that can be achieved by the cording to the signal amplitude; a comparator, to de-
system is 40 MHz. termine the output value by fixing a threshold.
The receiver has been implemented by using the
following component: Si PIN photodiode Hamamatsu
6 Experimental Testbed S5971 - high-speed photodiodes, with 1mm2 surface
area. To evaluate the better wavelength for the trans-
Some circuits implementation and experimental tests mitter Table 2 has been compiled considering the ab-
have been carried out. They are the basis to implement sorption coefficients for clear water and the photodi-

ISSN: 1790-5117 135 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

Figure 5: Experimental set-up Figure 6: Comparison between different wavelengths

Wavelength of Photodiode Absorption Coeffi-

emitted light Sensitivity cient The receiver circuit has been tested in air and
in water. Tests in clear water allows to receive cor-
450nm (blue) 0.37 A/W 9.2 x 10−5 cm−1
rectly the transmitted sequence generated by the sys-
532nm (green) 0.39 A/W 4.4 x 10−4 cm−1 tem (Figure 5) up to 2 meters: a more accurate evalu-
650nm (red) 0.42 A/W 3.4 x 10−3 cm−1 ation of the BER is planned for turbid water. Consid-
890nm (infrared) 0.63 A/W 6.0 x 10−2 cm−1 ering the limitation of the available testbed, tests in air
been performed at different distances: a reception of
Table 2: Sensitivity for PDB-S5971 High-speed pho- the transmitted sequence is possible starting from few
todiodes and absorption coefficients centimeters, since the AGC avoids saturation, up to 10
meters, while below light impulses are not clearly de-
tected. Even if the AGC stage has to be modified to
ode sensitivity reported in the component datasheet.
allow the reception in case of higher distances, consid-
The output current of the photodiode is proportional
ering that our target is up to 10-15 meters underwater,
to:
the tested circuit is a good starting point for further
improvements.
S × e−k(d) × P (2) The cost of the components is less than 30 euros,
where S is sensitivity an P is the power in watts, d very cheap in comparison with some acoustic modem.
the distance and k the absorption coefficient. Figure
6 shows how the output current varies according to 6.2 Planar transceiver
distance for different wavelengths of light, by using
the equation 2. Taking into account the previous circuits, a 2-d
Due to the severe attenuation in water, the output transceiver has been implemented. The LEDs dispo-
current for infrared is less than for blue/green light at sition on a 2-d structure has been performed using 12
10m, even if the sensitivity of the photodiode is higher Ledman LL1503PLBL1-301 blue LED (with 300 of
for infrared. It is possible to note that red light outper- FOV) disposed on a circular disk of 10 cm diame-
forms green light up to 1.5/2 m but blue and green are ter. The reduction of the overlap between the signal
better beyond. Taking into account the previous re- generated by each LED has been targeted so to allow
sults, also considering that the attenuation is strongly the possibility of supporting also a directional trans-
influenced by turbidity, the better choice appear to be mission, by using only one or a reduced set of LEDs.
blue or green light. These considerations are very im- The same approach has been considered for the place-
portant because the system performance is determined ment of the photodiodes for the 2-d receiver. Tests of
by the detector when signal attenuation along a wire- the transmitter have been carried out by using a sin-
less link is considered. It is crucial for the receiver to gle receiver, equipped with a SFH-2013P photodiode.
detect low-level optical signals maintaining a Signal- Different measures have been considered at different
to-Noise Ratio (SNR) sufficiently large to yield an ac- distances. The profile of the received optical signal,
ceptable Bit Error Rate (BER). determined by considering the maximum value in a

ISSN: 1790-5117 136 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

 Proceedings of the 9th WSEAS International Conference on TELECOMMUNICATIONS and INFORMATICS

Acknowledgements: We thanks Mr. Giorgio Carlini

for his support to circuits implementation.

References:
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turbidity varies, can be interesting to explore.

ISSN: 1790-5117 137 ISBN: 978-954-92600-2-1

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