Underwater modulated pulse laser imaging system

Abstract

The detection and identification of underwater threats in coastal areas are of interest to the Navy. When identifying a potential target, both two-dimensional (amplitude versus position) and three-dimensional (amplitude and range versus position) information are important. Laser imaging in turbid coastal waters makes this task challenging due to absorption and scattering in both the forward and backward directions. Conventional imaging approaches to suppress scatter rely on a pulsed laser and a range-gated receiver or an intensity-modulated continuous wave laser and a coherent RF receiver. The modulated pulsed laser imaging system is a hybrid of these two approaches and uses RF intensity modulation on a short optical pulse. The result is an imaging system capable of simultaneously acquiring high-contrast images along with high-precision unambiguous ranges. A working modulated pulsed laser line scanner was constructed and tested with a custom-built transmitter, a large-bandwidth optical receiver, and a high-speed digitizing oscilloscope. The effectiveness of the modulation to suppress both backscatter and forward scatter, as applied to both magnitude and range images, is discussed.