Active laser system for sea ice control

The airborne systems are used for complex investigations of coastline very successfully, for example its can to measure the depth of the sea, to discover the reefs and so on. Such information may be used in navigation too(1). The specific conditions of navigation in the North and Pole seas defines the necessity of exact knowledge about the ice cracks in order to find the possible direction of the ship movement. The active optical system, working in the near IR region, has many advantages before the passive one, especially if it is necessary to work during the polar night and at a bad weather conditions. In this article we discuss the demands to the laser active airborne system, that gives the accurate picture of the ice with high resolution in the daytime and nighttime conditions. Such system based on the laser, mechanical scanner and avalanche photodiode is very compact, reliable and informative. The picture of the ice surface can be shown on the TV monitor, can be written to the memory (photo or magnetic recorder) and can be delivered to the processing center (perhaps on board of a ship) by the radiochannel. The experimental results are shown together with results of this system probing in the conditions of the North Pole Ocean.