Identification of Littoral Targets with a Laser Range Profiler

Naval operations in the littoral have to deal with threats at short range in cluttered environments with both neutral and hostile targets. On board naval vessels there is a need for fast identification, which is possible with a laser range profiler. Additionally, in a coast-surveillance scenario a laser range profiler can be used for identification of small sea-surface targets approaching the coast. An eye-safe 1.5 um laser range profiler has been used to validate these claims. Experimental results show that range profiles of sea-surface targets can be obtained at ranges of several km’s. Seasurface clutter is shown to be negligible. Simulation shows that sea-surface targets can be distinguished from their range profiles. The influence on the identification performance of range resolution and a-priori knowledge of the aspect angle is presented. Classification has been tested on simulated range profiles of a number of small boats. With a range resolution of 0.3 meter (comparable to our experimental set-up), these small boats could be identified