Underwater material recognition based on laser-induced acoustic source

Laser-induced acoustic source has become an intense research interest because of its wideband signal components, increased autonomy, flexibility of subsurface and capability of airborne operation. It has large potential applications in undersea surveillance, port monitoring, defense missions and a variety of commercial activities such as target recognition and ocean-graphic survey. Underwater material recognition based on a remote laser-induced acoustic source is discussed in this paper. A Prony based method with damped sinusoids is used to estimate the laser-induced transient acoustic signals. Underwater acoustic recognition is studied by analyzing a single echo from a kind of material when the laser transient is incident to the material. The experimental results show that the acoustic thicknesses of material estimated by Prony's method are very close to the real ones.