Light as Trigger and Power: a VLC-Harvesting Hybrid Architecture for Marine Sensor Nodes

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of an underwater Visible Light Communication (VLC) channel, to be used for short range wireless transmission of data collected by underwater sensor nodes. The paper presents the architecture of a VLC transceiver that integrates a blue LED for data transmission and a Perovskite Solar Cell (PSC) for data reception. The paper also explores the usability of the PSC for combined data reception and energy harvesting purposes, demonstrating the feasibility of joining both functions onto a single component. The feasibility of the proposed system is demonstrated through a set of laboratory tests carried out by means of a dedicated experimental setup, emulating both day and night conditions. These tests proved the effectiveness of the proposed approach for depths up to 45 cm, demonstrating both data transmission and energy provisioning. Despite this limited range, owing to logistic laboratory constraints, the promising results pave the way for the implementation of similar systems for higher depths and real application scenarios.