Reduction of lidar ranging error in turbulent water based on WT-ICA method

A new signal-processing method for the underwater lidar system based on wavelet transform (WT) and independent component analysis (ICA) is presented in this paper. Turbulence in water causes stronger scattering in underwater lidar returns, which can reduce the ranging accuracy and spatial resolution of the underwater lidar system. The method we proposed combines wavelet decomposition and independent component analysis (ICA), the data sets from wavelet decomposition are used to form the input matrix of ICA. The new method benefits from adaptive filtering of WT and blind source separation of ICA, therefore, the scattering clutters are further reduced. The WT-ICA signal processing algorithm is tested with experimental data. A mirror and a black Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plate were used as the targets, respectively. Without using the WT-ICA, the ranging error with the mirror was 10.0 cm at 3 m distance when the attenuation coefficient of the water was 2.0 m^-1. A pump was used to generate turbulence in the water tank. When the flow rate of the pump was 200 L/min, after using WT-ICA, the ranging error was reduced from 14.0 cm to 4.0 cm. For the PVC plate, the ranging errors were 4.5 cm and 19.0 cm at 6.0 attenuation length with and without the algorithm respectively. In both cases, applying this algorithm can significantly improve the ranging accuracy. When the algorithm is applied, the ranging error and detection probability of target echoes with and without turbulence were similar. These results indicated that the WT-ICA method had the ability to reduce the influence of turbulence.