Design and implementation of underwater laser imaging test aquarium

A test aquarium was built to perform and simulate different marine environment to optimize laser imaging of submerged targets. The setup can be used to study many parameters as required (i.e., the correlation between the detection angle, the target surface topology and color, water turbidity due to clay and mud, and laser type at different depths, and backgrounds). A theoretical model of the detection process was tested using MATLAB simulation. The system was able to simulate light extinction of the real deep and shallow aqua environments due to plankton chlorophyll. The used dummy targets are approximately 1/500 of the real submarines and naval mines. These targets were illuminated by several laser wavelengths in order to identify the targets with different color and shapes. The setup permits to test the efficiency of different target camouflage versus optical detection.