Kyocera recently announced that they have developed a new underwater data transmission technology called Underwater Optical Communication (UWOC) which uses underwater laser data transmission technology for short-range data transmission.
According to Kyocera, they have managed to achieve a round-trip data transmission rate of 5.2Gbps over a distance of 100 meters, which is a huge achievement because normally, underwater data transmission rates can only be achieved at lower data transmission rates, and over short distances.
They say that this technology can be used for purposes such as streaming video recording data and details such as scan data and others from underwater drones to be sent directly to the main water vessel.
However, this technology has one major drawback, which is that it requires direct line of sight or direct view for the UWOC technology to work. Kyocera said that while this technology is suitable for transferring scan data or video underwater, it is not suitable for use as a long-range navigation system because of this.
Due to the short distance of this UWOC technology, it is not yet suitable for use as a replacement for the submarine cables currently used to connect countries and continents in the world.
Another advantage of this UWOC technology is that within the said 100-meter line-of-sight distance, the probability of data loss or data loss is very low, because it is not affected by underwater acoustic interference which is often an issue when talking about wireless underwater data transmission.
This technology is seen to be able to utilize not only underwater drone technology, but also underwater data scanning devices or aquatic wildlife trackers and so on.
