Abstract
This paper presents an experimental investigation of sigma-delta modulation (SDM) as a means of improving the performance of underwater optical communication systems. The study considers the impact of the key parameters of SDM, including oversampling ratio, the system's signal-to-noise ratio, bandwidth, and optical link distance. The results of this study provide insights into the design and optimization of SDM-based underwater optical communication systems, paving the way for future research in this field. A fully digital solution, albeit operating at a lower bit rate than previously published OFDM counterparts, provides immunity against nonlinearities of the system and robustness to noise, which is relevant in harsh environments. Moreover, the proposed solution based on a first-order bandpass SDM architecture avoids the employment of a DAC at the receiver, simplifying its operation and reducing costs. An experimental investigation is carried out for the transmission of 16-QAM over SDM, and a transmission distance of 4.8 m over the underwater channel is achieved with a maximum transmission rate of 400 Mbit/s with an MER of 28 dB.