Refraction analysis of optical wireless channel through air–ocean interface by graphic operations

Optical wireless communications through air–ocean interface provide flexible links between the aerial vehicles and underwater platforms for the commercial, scientific and military applications. The trans-media propagation of the light beam and the light field underwater were simulated to examine the behavior of the optical channels refracted by the rough ocean surface based on the JONSWAP ocean wave model. Computations dealing with the light refraction in 3D space were implemented by the Direct3D graphic functions, which accelerate the process enormously. This computation technique was applied to the analysis of several specific cases of optical transmitter and receiver diversity schemes, and thereby the diversity configurations can be optimized to attain a lowest optical scintillation index.