Backscattering Interference Channel Characteristics in Full-Duplex Underwater Optical Wireless Communication

The performance of an underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system, which is capable of long distance full-duplex transmission, is limited due to the strong attenuation of water, causing the incoming optical signals at the high sensitive photomultiplier tube (PMT) based receiver to become weak. Moreover, the backscattering photons emitted from a co-side light source can cause non-negligible interference for symbol recovery. Using the single-scattering model, this paper provides closed form expressions to approximate the path loss and channel impulse response of the backscattering link. Numerical results demonstrate a good agreement between the derived analytical results and those obtained through Monte Carlo simulation under various conditions.