The paper contains a comparative analysis and discussion of resultant recommendations for the optimization of an airborne lidar's parameters, with application to modern lidar systems as employed in various countries for the Ocean and continental shelf research. As criteria for the systems comparison in different remote sensing conditions ( aircraft altitude, depth, day/night, zenithal sun angle, sea-water attenuation coefficient, receiver optical system's field of view (FOV), laser wavelength, etc.) Sakitt's D-index of discriminability is used. We demonstrate the optical signal, as determined by the following process: reflecting from boundary -backscattering in the atmospheresecondary reflecting from boundary, to be the cause for limiting the distance of underwater measurements. Some estimates for the bottom depth values to be achieved by a "super-lidar" are presented.
In a series of laser sounding experiments the registered shapes of retroreflected light pulses demonstrate an anomalously high levels of signals from isolated sea-water layers. We propose here an interpretation for such peculiarities of echo-signal shape with the use of developed theory of backscattered light pulse kinetics in turbid medium. Our approach is based on the accounting of the angular anisotropy of the scattering in the back hemisphere and the geometrical conditions of typical lidar experiment, which determine the small angle divergence of collected light beam from the retro-reflection direction. According to the analysis presented below, the enhanced backscattering from isolated depth levels may be caused by high concentration of large biological particles (alga cellscoccolitophorids, diatoms, etc.) in the corresponding water layers. The explanation is shown to be consistent with the known unique measurements of volume scattering phase function in the vicinity of backward direction.
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