Modeling and simulation of range-gated underwater laser imaging systems

Abstract

There is currently considerable interest in developing electro-optic systems for underwater imaging classification and identification of submerged objects such as fish shoals and mines. The imaging systems can be divided into active imaging systems and passive imaging systems. The main feature of the passive imaging systems is that they haven’t illumination sources and depend on lights from targets or surroundings. The active imaging systems use light sources to illuminate the targets and collect the reflection from the targets. The advantages of active imaging systems over passive imaging systems are high contrast and without the affection of environment sources. The gated Intensified CCD (ICCD) cameras are widely used in the active imaging systems because that the laser range-gated (LRG) technology is an effective way to eliminate the backscattering noise. This paper is devoted to present a model for simulation and evaluation the performance of gated ICCD cameras for airborne underwater applications. Some simulation results are presented and discussed.