Abstract—Underwater wireless communication is a fast-growing area with growing needs for high-speed, reliable data transmission, particularly in scientific, military, and environmental monitoring applications. Due to high attenuation and limited bandwidth, conventional methods such as Radio Frequency (RF) and acoustic communication are often unsuccessful in underwater environments. Li-Fi emerges as a promising alternative, offering high-speed, low-latency, and energy-efficient data transmission using visible light. In this study, the viability and effectiveness of Light Fidelity (Li-Fi), a novel Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) technique for underwater settings, are examined and offers a comprehensive analysis of the performance of Li-Fi communication in various water types that include clear/clean, turbid, and saltwater. The performance metrics considered for the evaluation of proposed model are received Signal strength, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and bit rate. In the proposed work, the transmission distance is set to 47 cm, with the underwater depth maintained at 15 cm. Results show that Li-Fi performance is significantly impacted by water quality. The signal strength, SNR and data rate achieved for clear water is high in comparison to the salt water. The proposed prototype shows that Li-Fi technology can be one of the promising technology that can be used for underwater communication.
 

Keywords—light propagation, turbid water, clear water, saline water, Li-Fi, underwater communication, optical wireless communication, water quality signal strength, bit rate, Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)

Cite: Vrunda Kusanur, Priyadarshini K Desai, Hemanth T. M., Manjunath K. M., and Suhas Gowda H. B., “Performance Analysis of Underwater Communication Using Li-Fi Across different Water Qualities," Journal of Communications, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 589-595, 2025.

Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).