Spaceborne underwater imaging

Shallow waters are very important for human and biological activity. Remote sensing of these areas is challenging, as it requires separation of ocean (or lake) bottom, water and atmospheric effects. In this paper we describe a concept and theory for spaceborne recovery of the underwater depth map, optical characteristics of the water and atmosphere, and the descattered ocean bottom. The sensing is based on multi-angular geometry and polarization. An orbiting platform captures a subspace of the Earth´s light field, which is sensitive to the atmospheric and water characteristics. Consequently, it is possible to invert the image formation process using the acquired data. Recovery is simplified using recent findings about natural characteristics of deep water backscatter and surface transmissivity. It also exploits accumulated historical sounding data.