Real-Time Ocean Insights: Integrated Sensing and Underwater Communication System

Underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) is a promising technology for providing high-speed and secure wireless links for underwater unmanned vehicles, which increasingly require both reliable communication and environmental sensing capabilities. Conventional framebased cameras are widely used for underwater communication, but their limited temporal resolution, redundant data acquisition, and relatively high processing latency restrict their use in high-speed optical communication. Event cameras asynchronously detect pixel-level brightness changes with high temporal resolution, low latency, and sparse data output, making them attractive for underwater integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). In this paper, we develop and experimentally demonstrate an event-camera-based underwater optical integrated sensing and communication (U-OISAC) method, in which the event camera serves as both an optical communication receiver and an underwater optical channel sensor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental demonstration of an event-camera-based UOISAC system. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves 10 kbit/s over the underwater channel with a bit-error rate (BER) below 3.8 × 10−3, satisfying the hard-decision forward-error-correction threshold, and 20 kbit/s with a BER below 2 × 10−2, satisfying the softdecision forward-error-correction threshold. Beyond data reception, the same event-camera receiver demonstrated the capability to estimate turbidity-related optical attenuation from the received event responses. The estimated attenuation coefficients followed the independently derived reference values under different laboratory-emulated water conditions, with the best normalized mean absolute error of 2.71% achieved. These results highlight the potential of a single neuromorphic receiver for simultaneous underwater optical communication and water-condition sensing.