Submerged Solar Energy Harvesters Performance for Underwater Applications

Abstract

underwater communications is the transmission of data in an unguided water medium through wireless carriers such as; optical waves, radio-frequency waves and acoustic waves. Such type of communication system is utilized to enable the realization of the ocean exploration system and other marine monitoring/exploration systems. Seeking for a sustainable setup, the enrolment of energy harvesting sources in these wireless nodes have been presented as a replacement of the short-life-time battery sources. In this paper, there are experimental measurements as well as theoretical studies for two different light harvesters have been conducted underwater with considering the air measurements as a reference. Moreover, Trade-off between cooling effect and light attenuation as well as scattering is tackled where optimum submerging distance is measured for various water types. I–V characteristic curves for the two harvesters are plotted using Keithley 2401 source-meter and artificial calibrated light source. The simulation model is validated using the experimental data, where perfect agreement was observed after considering the experimental parameter.