Kyocera claims 5.2 Gbps underwater laser data blast in lab tests
- Reference: 1765197016
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/08/kyocera_underwater_multigigabit_comms/
- Source link:
The Japanese corp aims to enable real-time, large-volume data transmission for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and drones used in marine surveys, structural inspections, and resource exploration.
Underwater communication faces significant challenges: acoustic systems manage only a few Kbps, while radio frequency delivers a few Mbps at short range. Military submarines use very low frequency radio waves to communicate over long distances while submerged, understood to support data rates of only about 300 bits per second.
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The system Kyocera tested is currently limited to short distances, however, the company is aiming to extend the range and achieve higher data rates with ongoing research.
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Kyocera's high-speed underwater wireless optical comms tech in a lab environment
In laboratory tests using freshwater, the research team successfully transmitted data at 5.2 Gbps. Kyocera told us a separate development team focused on commercialization achieved a speed of 750 Mbps, even in harsh marine environments, with a maximum of 1 Gbps.
[3]Micron, Kyocera, Samsung bet billions on Japan chip plants
[4]Risk-averse Kyocera gambles nearly $10b of own shares on semiconductor growth
[5]Microsoft chucks patent sueball at Kyocera over Android phones
[6]Kyocera: Torque among yourselves on our unbreakable ruggedmobe
The trials were conducted in an offshore saltwater environment over distances of 15 cm to 1.5 m, with moderate water turbidity, to evaluate system stability and performance under various conditions.
The system uses gallium nitride (GaN) blue semiconductor lasers, and Kyocera has developed an optical front-end circuit with a wide bandwidth exceeding 1 GHz, which - we're told - enables significantly more data throughput than other underwater comms methods.
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A spokesperson said it developed an algorithm to make full use of the wide bandwidth characteristics of the device, which is how it achieved a transmission rate of 5.2 Gbps.
However, the PHY (physical layer) specification under development does not yet include a mechanism for dealing with variable environmental factors, such as light scattering, absorption, and turbulence in the water.
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Kyocera told us it intends to build a product targeting 2 Gbps over short distances, commercializing it by March 2027. With these speeds, live underwater video streaming, sensor data transfer, and collaborative inspections may become possible.
TThe UWOC tech will be showcased by Kyocera at the CES 2026 show in Las Vegas in January. ®
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You're the creative mind at wherever you work I see.
Depends on your use case, if your use case is to update firmware on a device at depth, then you can use traditional comms to pilot a deep sea craft, and the short range laser to flash the firmware / deposit a payload. Remote low speed shell to the craft, then a high speed uplink to the target device to perform your updates, upgrades, software deployment etc...or go the other way around, say you have a deep sea research station that is gathering gigabytes of data, you could send a craft down to collect it using its high speed uplink instead of having to attempt a potentially damaging "disk swap" process...you can retrieve your data without physical contact and much lower risk.
You can't plug a patch lead or serial cable in at depth and swapping media with a remote controlled robot has the potential risk of damaging your deep sea tech.
As for 1.5m not being a lot...that's through water...this same sort of tech would probably work at very long range through a vacuum so it could be used as a high speed way to update satellites etc...lots of potential use cases.
Hell, I'd take 2-3 inches to allow me to clamp a device to a rack to jack into a network in a rack with a laser without having to open the door. Sure, I could do this with wifi, or leave a patch lead dangling somewhere...but with all the interference and the potential risk of leaving a cable dangling / wifi network setup...a laser would be far more reliable and secure...I could secure it by having an aperture that opens and closes only when a registered counter part to the rack side of things is mated up, and channel the laser through a steel pipe to prevent it being observed from another rack. I could have all the convenience of a dangling wire, with none of the security risk.
If you honestly think doing a firmware or even a sofware update on kit whilst its at the bottom of the ocean is a valid use case then you can't have much experience of doing updates here on dry land.
"Upgrading! Please ensure power and comms remain stable...".
Wait!
Lasers? Sharks? Is this a good idea?
Re: Wait!
Fantastic idea if you train the sharks to dive to depth and update remote research units / download telemetry for you using their lasers.
Who's a good boy Mr Sharky!
You could easily increase that to 10Gbps if you reduce the distance to 1cm. Utterly pointless, I can’t imagine a scenario of up to 1.5m where a wire wouldn’t work, especially if this needs line of sight to remain stable, which it will because LASERS.
"I can’t imagine a scenario of up to 1.5m where a wire wouldn’t work"
Patch lead dangling for convenience in a DC rack...or any scenario where you want the least possible interception risk.
I don't think this laser solution is entirely for the convenience of an uplink somewhere, it has many security benefits.
When you achieve > 1 km range...
... even at 110 bps. I'd like to hear about it.
Now, that is quite a short distance... Bit more work to do there chaps.
Covering the N Atlantic with a mesh of optical repeaters might be a way to counter attacks on cables.