Optical ray propagation through turbulent underwater space

Abstract

This paper is aimed at the description of an optical ray propagating through underwater turbulent environment. In the first part, the description of the properties of underwater turbulence and its impact on the optical beam is presented. In the second part of the paper, method based upon Snell’s law is presented. In the third part, an approach using Ray tracing matrices is shown. The outcome of this thesis is a procedure for calculating the propagation of the optical beam through a turbulent underwater environment.