Universal assessment method for laser detection probability of sunken engineering structures

Object and purpose of research. Laser diagnostics, analysis of reflected laser signal from fixed underwater objects, improvement of laser optical methods, technologies and tools for underwater object studies, development of laser detection systems, determination of laser indication probability for fixed underwater objects. Materials and methods. Laser detection systems, analytical and computational methods, software programs, analytical tools for measurement data processing, laser diagnostics of reflected laser signal from underwater objects taking into account dissipation and absorption in atmosphere and hydrosphere. Main results. Improvement of technology and methods for diagnostics of reflected laser signal (back-scattering), determination of reliable detection limits for laser signals reflected from fixed underwater objects, software programs, laser diagnostics, efficiency analysis of laser detection systems. Conclusion. The study showed that high efficiency of laser detection systems considerably depends on the selected tech- nology, reflected laser signal display and processing techniques, and also on the probabilistic methods adopted to estimate the reflected signal luminance and the knowledge of hydrodsphere parameters.