Research of application of high-repetition-rate green laser in underwater imaging system

It is commonly known that absorption and scattering are the main causes of reducing performance of imaging system, especially imaging distance and resolution. Generally, various techniques are applied to decrease the effect of scattering, such as synchronous scanning and range-gated technique. Continuous-laser imaging technique meets requirements of imaging objects in the large field of view in real time, but imaging distance is less than 2 attenuation lengths in natural water. High-repetition-rate green laser, called quasi-continuous wave (QCW) green laser, is a better light source for underwater imaging. It has 1 kHz-100 kHz modulated rate, and its single pulse peak power is KW magnitude, which can be applied to range-gated imaging as Canadian LUCIE system. In addition, its polarization property is excellent for underwater polarization imaging. Therefore, it has enormous potential to underwater imaging. In order to realize its performance in underwater imaging system, we setup a separated underwater staring imaging system. For this system, a theoretic model is built by the lidar equation and optic transmission theory, and the system is evaluated by modulation transfer function (MTF). The effects of laser and receiver’s parameters for the system are analyzed. Then the comparative experiments are conducted in turbid water in laboratory. The results indicate that high pulse energy improves imaging distance. Aperture and polarization could reduce the effect of scattering effectively in staring system. The result shows that this underwater system performs better by choosing suitable parameters of source and receiver.

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