This overall research program is oriented towards a deeper experimental and theoretical understanding of meteorological properties of the marine wave boundary layer (MWBL) and laser light propagation in the marine environment. The main objective is to develop a periscope imaging, electronic warfare, and High Energy Laser (HEL) beam propagation model over the marine aerosol boundary layer for the integration of propagation modeling software into a system that will investigate absorption and scattering properties of marine aerosols, interplay between aerosols and turbulence, and impact on imaging and electronic warfare (EW). To advance this goal requires the development of an experimental data base derived from measurements using specialized lasers, instruments, and sensors over electromagnetic propagation conditions most characteristic of the marine layer. This information will be analyzed and integrated to build up state-of-the-art computational models capable of handling the dynamic character of the marine aerosol boundary layer within 1 60 ft of the ocean surface. Ultimately, integrating such a robust model into a laser sensor instrument will become a valuable and deployable predictive tool to enable and support Navy ships and submarines to meet the challenges of diverse global marine environments that impact the performance of the Navys current and planned operational systems.
Benefit: A practical and accurate marine wave boundary atmospheric model suite coupled to a data collection system can perform high fidelity range estimation, ranging accuracy, target detection, identification and classification at range and power distribution along a horizontal or angular path between source and target-of-interest. This will offer unprecedented enhancement of situational awareness and enable increased safety, particularly in difficult maritime situations. This can benefit and have direct positive impacts on free space communication links in the maritime environments. More generally, with the correct detection tools and predictive modeling that will be developed in this program, naval and commercial air traffic control staff can warn pilots of low and medium altitude wind shear events occurring within the runway corridor and protect against sudden and dangerous deviations from the intended flight path.
Keywords: Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Fiber lasers, laser beam propagation, Marine Aerosol Environment, Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer (MABL), Marine wave boundary layer (MWBL), Marine turbulent boundary Layer, Raman Lidar
