Optical Information Transmission in Turbidity and Complex Media: Challenges and Innovative Breakthroughs
A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Optical Communication and Network".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 March 2026 | Viewed by 29
Special Issue Editors
Interests: free space optical communication; fiber laser
Interests: mode-locked fiber lasers; nonlinear fiber optics; all-optical processing; free-space optical communication; micro photonics device
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: free-space optical communications; the design of communication circuits; the modeling and simulation of light propagation in complex environments; coherent detection
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: space optical communication; optical information transmission
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Abstract: In both natural and engineering settings, the transmission of light in turbid and complex media (such as biological tissues, fog, deep-sea water, industrial suspensions) faces multiple challenges—including scattering, absorption, and nonlinear effects leading to light field distortion, information attenuation, and noise interference—which have long constrained technological breakthroughs in optical imaging, communication, sensing, and other fields. In recent years, with the deepening of interdisciplinary research, this field has been undergoing a comprehensive reform from basic theory to applied technology will focus on this cutting-edge direction, aiming to gather the wisdom of global scholars and promote the leapfrog development of optical information transmission theory and technology.
Core challenges and technological innovations
The strong scattering characteristics of turbid media, such as the Rice scattering of biological tissues, make it difficult for traditional optical methods to achieve precise detection. However, new regulatory strategies are rewriting this situation: for example, optical channel-based intensity flow (OCIS) technology replaces traditional wavefront shaping with linear intensity operation, achieves focal reconstruction after scattering media at the sub-millisecond level, and has been successfully applied to secure optical communication. In addition, polarization modulation technology has shown unique advantages in turbid water bodies; experiments have shown that the imaging contrast of 456 nm linearly polarized light in 1-2 μ m particle size water bodies is significantly better than that of natural light, and natural light performs better in 3-5 μ m particle size environments, providing theoretical support for underwater exploration and marine resource development.
Interdisciplinary application and scenario expansion
- Biomedical and non-destructive testing
The combination of photoacoustic imaging and fluorescence microscopy technology enhances tissue penetration depth and resolution through sonofluorescence signals, achieving precise identification of tumor edges. In the field of spectral analysis, measurement methods based on response conversion reconstruct the linear relationship between absorption and scattering coefficients, achieving high-precision analysis with an error of less than 6% in milk component detection. Optical matching media (such as absorbers modulated with food-grade dyes) can effectively eliminate boundary effects and assist in the clinical application of diffusion optical tomography (DOT).
- Environmental monitoring and ocean communication
In the turbid waters of the Yellow Sea, the LED underwater optical communication system of the Wuhan Liubo team achieves 1.5-meter zero-error transmission at a speed of 5 Mbps, breaking through the bottleneck of water quality interference through adaptive modulation and forward error correction technology. In the field of architecture, the laser communication solution for Low-E glass curtain walls adopts a “transceiver off-axis+auxiliary alignment” architecture, which maintains stable transmission of 1.25 Gbps even when penetrating double-layer-coated glass, providing a feasible solution for data interconnection between smart buildings.
- Industry and Extreme Environments
Multi-core fiber amplifier technology has set a transmission record of 410.5 Tbit/s in underwater communication, increasing capacity and reducing relay power consumption through spatial division multiplexing. Moreover, the Profibus-to-fiber module enables real-time control against electromagnetic interference in chemical workshops and supports high-precision data exchange in explosion-proof environments.
Positioning and Submission Direction of Our Journal
Our Special Issue is committed to building interdisciplinary platforms that cover the following core areas:
Basic theories: statistical modeling of light fields in scattering media, quantum transport in stochastic media, nonlinear optical effects.
Technical methods: wavefront shaping, polarization modulation, spectral encoding, deep learning reconstruction algorithms.
Application innovation: Biomedical imaging, underwater communication, industrial process monitoring, extreme environment sensing.
We sincerely invite theoretical researchers, experimental scientists, and engineering technicians to jointly explore how to break through transmission limits using material design (such as optical matching media), system optimization (such as multi-core fiber architecture), and intelligent algorithms (such as adaptive modulation). Against this backdrop, how can we transform laboratory results into practical technologies for marine exploration, medical diagnosis, and other scenarios?
Submission scope: Original research papers, reviews, technical briefs, and interdisciplinary reviews are welcome. This issue will prioritize the publication of achievements with breakthrough methods, high application value, or significant engineering verification to promote the transition of optical information transmission technology from the laboratory to the real world.
Dr. Peng Zhang
Dr. Wanzhuo Ma
Dr. Haifeng Yao
Dr. Dongya Xiao
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- optical information transmission
- turbid media
- scattering
- wavefront shaping
- biomedical imaging
- atmospheric aerosols
- computational imaging
- underwater communication
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