Evaluation of underwater optical-acoustic hybrid network

The deployment of underwater networks allows researchers to collect explorative and monitoring data on underwater ecosystems. The acoustic medium has been widely adopted in current research and commercial uses, while the optical medium remains experimental only. According to our survey on the properties of acoustic and optical communications and preliminary simulation results have shown significant trade-offs between bandwidth, propagation delay, power consumption, and effective communication range. We propose a hybrid solution that combines the use of acoustic and optical communication in order to overcome the bandwidth limitation of the acoustic channel by enabling optical communication with the help of acoustic-assisted alignment between optical transmitters and receivers.