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QinetiQ, in association with Frazer-Nash Consultancy and Dstl, have developed a new numerical model of optical communications where part of the transmission is through water. The model (called Optical Communications Underwater Model or OCUM) finds the signal from air platform to sea platform (and vice versa) or between underwater platforms including the effects of scattering within the water, the refraction at the sea surface and transmission through cloud. The effects of scattering are found through Monte Carlo simulation before parameterizing the results to be used in subsequent calculations. The background light is also included from the sun to obtain the signal to noise ratio which is then used to find the analytical and numerical (via a message transmission simulation) bit error rate. This paper shows some of the details of the model and the approaches taken to obtain the transmission efficiency and performance. Some basic results will be presented to demonstrate the utility of the model.

Optical communications in the blue-green waveband offers the attractive prospect of secure, high-bandwidth communications for a variety of civil and military applications. Recent developments in blue-green lasers, spectral filters, and detection technologies are reviewed and their potential for compact, affordable systems is discussed.