be used to transmit other relevant sensor data to/from
the robot. Considering the range/alignment limita-
tions identified in the evaluation above this would re-
quire the operator and robot to remain in the same
plane.
As far the writers are aware this is the first LIFI ca-
pable system designed for real world applications in
the underwater domain. As such it is a prototype that
demonstrates the technologies readiness to compete.
Already its has demonstrated bandwidth comparable
to that of commercially available acoustic modems.
The range of this device is a severe limitation in com-
parison to acoustic modems. This limitation is ex-
plored below.
7 FUTURE WORK
The current version of both the hardware and com-
munication protocol have a number of known limi-
tations. The Cree C503D0-WAN LEDs have a rela-
tively high luminous intensity in comparison to their
power consumption. Using LEDs that output more
lumens while sacrificing power would allow for com-
munication at a much longer distance and would also
preform much more desirably in well lit environ-
ments.
The Manchester coding scheme is very ineffi-
cient, requiring twice as much bandwidth in its en-
coded form than the raw data. IBM’s 8b/10b cod-
ing scheme(Franaszek and Widmer, 1984) is another
DC-balanced line code that has the benefit of provid-
ing additional control symbols (no decoding) that can
be used to construct a frame. 8b/10b is much more
complex that Manchester but only uses 25% overhead
bandwidth. Switching from Manchester to 8b/10b en-
coding would increase overall bandwidth by 60%.
An obviously extension to this work would be
construct an VLC device that has better out of plane
performance and with more uniform radial sensitiv-
ity. This would allow any two devices to communi-
cate with each other regardless of their relative ori-
entations, provided their bodies do not occlude the
light emitted from the device. We are in the process
of mounting the LightByte sensor on Milton with the
goal of driving the UUV underwater wirelessly from
a diver in close proximity.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council (NSERC) through the
NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network (NCFRN).
This work was also supported by the Natural Sci-
ences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
through the York University Vision Science to Appli-
cation (VISTA) program.
REFERENCES
Bogie, I. (1972). Conduction and magnetic signalling in
the sea a background review. Radio and Electronic
Engineer, 42(10):447–452.
Codd-Downey, R., Jenkin, M., and Allison, K. (2017). Mil-
ton: An open hardware underwater autonomous vehi-
cle. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Infor-
mation and Automation (ICIA), pages 30–34. IEEE.
Condliffe, J. (2011). Will LIFI be the new wi-fi? Accessed
14-April-2017.
da Vinci, L. (2010). 1452-1591. Notebooks of Leonardo
da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci’s. Note-Books Arranged
and rendered into English with Introductions. Edward
McCurdy, Kessinger Publishing, LLC.
EvoLogics (2009). Products / underwater acoustic modems
— evologics gmbh. Accessed 14-April-2017.
Fletcher, J. (1982). An arithmetic checksum for serial trans-
missions. IEEE Transactions on Communications,
30(1):247–252.
Forsberg, C. (1988). The zmodem inter application file
transfer protocol. Accessed 28-Feburary-2018.
Franaszek, P. A. and Widmer, A. X. (1984). Byte oriented
DC balanced (0, 4) 8b/10b partitioned block transmis-
sion code. US Patent 4,486,739.
Haas, H., Yin, L., Wang, Y., and Chen, C. (2016). What is
LIFI? Journal of Lightwave Technology, 34(6):1533–
1544.
IEEE (2002). IEEE standard for telecommunications and
information exchange between systems - lan/man -
specific requirements - part 15: Wireless medium ac-
cess control (mac) and physical layer (phy) specifi-
cations for wireless personal area networks (wpans).
IEEE Std 802.15.1-2002, pages 1–473.
IEEE (2013). IEEE standard for information tech-
nology - telecommunications and information ex-
change between systemslocal and metropolitan area
networks– specific requirements–part 11: Wireless
lan medium access control (mac) and physical layer
(phy) specifications–amendment 4: Enhancements for
very high throughput for operation in bands below
6 ghz. IEEE Std 802.11ac-2013 (Amendment to
IEEE Std 802.11-2012, as amended by IEEE Std
802.11ae-2012, IEEE Std 802.11aa-2012, and IEEE
Std 802.11ad-2012), pages 1–425.
ISO (2008). ISO/IEC 18000-1:2008 information technol-
ogy – radio frequency identification for item manage-
ment – part 1: Reference architecture and definition of
parameters to be standardized. Accessed 12-March-
2018.
ISO (2013). ISO/IEC 18092:2013 information technology
– telecommunications and information exchange be-
LightByte: Communicating Wirelessly with an Underwater Robot using Light
305