News News
Contact us
  • Customer service number:64321087
  • Commercial service telephone:13918059423
  • Technical service telephone:13918059423
  • Contact person: Mr. Cui 
  • Service email:shxtb@163.com
  • Address: room 107, building 8, no. 100, guilin road, xuhui district, Shanghai

Solar cells used to boost wireless underwater communications

The date of: 2022-02-17
viewed: 0

source:New Atlas


Radio waves don't travel well through water, which is why devices such as ROVS (remotely operated vehicles) have to be linked to their operator via a communications cable. According to a new study, however, solar panels may soon allow for practical underwater light-based communications.

First of all, various groups have already used pulses of laser light to transmit data underwater. The functionality of such systems has been limited, though, due to the fact that the transmitter which emits the light has to be precisely aligned with the photodiode that receives it. Because of this limitation, the two units have to be located quite close to one another.

Solar cells, on the other hand, are designed to gather scattered incoming light from a wide area. Unfortunately, however, they're much better at channelling that light into an electrical circuit than they are at converting it into a data signal. A team from China's Zhejiang University now claims to have addressed that shortcoming.

'Until now, achieving high-speed links using off-the-shelf silicon solar cells has required complex modulation schemes and algorithms, which need intense computing resources that use extra power and create a high processing latency,' said the lead scientist, Prof. Jing Xu. 'Using [computer] modelling and simulation of connected solar cells, we optimized the peripheral circuit, which significantly improved the performance of our solar cell-based detector.'

The resulting setup incorporated a 3 x 3 array of linked solar cells, creating a 3.4 x 3.4-cm (1.3-in) detection area. That array was placed at one end of a 7-meter (22.9-ft)-long water tank, at the other end of which was a laser diode. A series of mirrors within the tank, however, caused the laser light to have to travel a total of 35 meters (114.8 ft) to get from the diode to the solar array.

When tested, the system reportedly exhibited reliable stability, low power consumption, and a much higher detection bandwidth than has been reported in previous studies which used commercial solar cells for the same purpose. More specifically, the scientists managed to achieve a -20-dB bandwidth of 63.4 MHz, which enabled a 35-meter/150-Mbps (megabits per second) underwater wireless optical link.

Xu and colleagues now plan on studying how effective the setup is at detecting weak optical signals, similar to those that it would have to work with in muddy or otherwise murky water.



Hot News / Related to recommend
  • 2024 - 12 - 23
    Click on the number of times: 0
    source:Yasmin Ahmed SalemMax Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials (MPI-SusMat) researchers have transformed dealloying—traditionally seen as a corrosive, destructive process—into a groundbreakin...
  • 2024 - 12 - 20
    Click on the number of times: 0
    source: University of LiverpoolThe University of Liverpool has reported a significant advancement in engineering biology and clean energy. A team of researchers has developed an innovative light-drive...
  • 2024 - 12 - 19
    Click on the number of times: 0
    source:SMALL CAPSAxel REE (ASX: AXL) has identified significant gallium mineralisation following a review of auger and diamond drill samples collected from the ongoing Phase One campaign at its flagsh...
  • 2024 - 12 - 18
    Click on the number of times: 2
    source:Helmholtz Association of German Research CentresAnodes for the electrolytic splitting of water are usually iridium-based materials. In order to increase the stability of the iridium catalyst, a...
  • Copyright ©Copyright 2018 2020 Shanghai rare earth association All Rights Reserved Shanghai ICP NO.2020034223
    the host:Shanghai Association of Rare Earth the guide:Shanghai Development and Application Office of Rare Earth the organizer:Shanghai rare earth industry promotion center
    犀牛云提供云计算服务