Underwater drones may soon be able to transfer data at lightning speeds—though only if the receiver is nearby.

In November, the Kyoto, Japan-based electronics maker Kyocera demonstrated a new optical underwater communications technology that boasts lab tests of up to 5.2 gigabits per second at short range. The company is promoting this new optical transmission tech to enable faster inspections of structural damage at undersea worksites—an application that requires handling and transferring large volumes of data in undersea settings.

For instance, underwater inspection drones are today regularly used to gather footage of oil and gas pipes, submarine electric or communications cables, and other underwater structures. But there’s no real-time, easy way for the drones to send their large data signals through the water, unless the drone is tethered by wire.

But possibly using tech like what Kyocera has developed, an underwater drone might one day gather and store its footage and then dock at a fixed underwater station on the seafloor bed to wirelessly offload its drives. From there, the data station could ship its large stores of data via cable to a buoy or ship on the surface, or a station on the ground.

Kyocera will be showcasing this new technology at the consumer tech world’s largest venue, the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next month.

Why Lasers Beat Sound Underwater

Transmitting data underwater today typically involves 1980s-era modem speeds. Current underwater acoustic modems, for instance, can transmit and receive signals across tens of kilometers distance—though only at the meager bit rate of a few kilobits per second.

Contrast that to underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC). In offshore tests last August Kyocera researchers achieved 0.75 Gbps throughput to a receiver 15 centimeters away—a world UWOC record, according to the company.

So Kyocera researchers are now developing a 1 Gbps UWOC prototype, and aim to introduce a 2 Gbps commercial version as early as 2027.

To be successful, the researchers will have to overcome several challenges, says Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas, Dean of Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

“They will need to improve the optical beam quality so that it is tightly focused with low divergence, allowing it to travel farther without being scattered in changing underwater conditions,” he says. “They must also ensure the system can sustain high speeds in the ocean environment, even though they have already exceeded that benchmark in the lab.” He adds that they will also need to develop “a receiver with a wider aperture to capture more light to help push speeds beyond the current limit of 750 megabits per second.”

Nirmalathas adds that “human exploration at shallow depths and autonomous platforms at greater depths remain essential for uncovering the undersea world.” Advances like Kyocera’s, he adds, will be key to maintaining communications and supporting the next generation of underwater explorations and applications.

Researchers from Kyocera tested a high-speed, underwater optical wireless communication system offshore last August.Kyocera

From Tank to Ocean, With Caveats

To realize the company’s lab-bench 5.2 Gbps findings, Kyocera researchers optimized three pieces of the puzzle. First, they engineered a blue-laser system that pulses on and off thousands of times per second, encoding data in the bursts. Second, they made a receiver sensitive enough to catch those pulses even as the pulses scatter through seawater. Third, the researchers developed a way to split the data signal into dozens of thin channels and send them all at once, multiplying the throughput.

“Together, these components enable gigabit data-rate communications throughout the system,” says Yoshitaka Toeda, a member of the advanced research group.

The system uses blue lasers instead of other wavelengths for a simple reason: blue light travels farther through water and doesn’t scatter as much. That’s why submarine searchlights and deep-sea cameras also favor blue. Kyocera’s laser is built from gallium nitride, a semiconductor material chosen for its efficiency in generating that blue wavelength, explained Ryota Kimura, a researcher in Kyocera’s communication systems R&D division.

“It allowed us to assess how stable and reliable the prototype was under various conditions,” Kimura says. And though the seawater was moderately turbid, “we were able to communicate over distances ranging from 15 centimeters to 1.5 meters,” he added. “That gave us a clear picture of the prototype’s performance in a real-world environment.”