Aperture synthesis, as its name implies, synthesises an aperture by storing successive echoes obtained from a moving platform and by processing the results as if they had been obtained from a multi-element array enables a high azimuth resolution to be obtained from a physically small array. The technique has been highly successful in radio astronomy, and in both satellite and aircraft borne radar. However the use of this technique has been very limited in the sonar environment mainly because of difficulties of maintaining a stable track under water and problems of under-sampling of the aperture arising from the relatively slow velocity of acoustic waves in water. The thesis describes a study of the application of the synthetic aperture technique to sonar, highlighting some of these difficulties and possible means of overcoming them. A study has also been made the application of the bathymetric technique, a technique for measuring the height of objects on the sea bed, to synthetic aperture sonar. In addition to the theoretical work and computer simulation, an experimental system has been built in a water tank measuring some 9m by 5m by 2m deep in order to test a number of the algorithms and some good results have been obtained.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Two areas of underwater acoustics are investigated: ocean-bottom scattering and acoustic fields in geometrically dispersive sound channels. The purpose is to describe and provide an understanding of the physical mechanisms in these two areas by comparing analyzed results from ocean experiments with theoretical computations. Experiments using directive 19.5-kHz transducers illustrate temporal and spacial behavior of signals scattered from the ocean bottom. The signals fluctuate, as a function of acoustic geometry, in linear relation to source and receiver motion and to signal frequency. Spacial structure of the acoustic field depends on frequency and acoustic geometry and is independent of motion and bottom roughness. Data supporting these observations are included as well as data showing the effects of bottom type on the scattered returns, that is, the existence of subbottom returns in some data. Volume-scattering-strength profiles are also provided from data obtained in these experiments. Continuous-wave (CW) and impulsive sources covering frequencies 5 to 260 Hz were towed and deployed respectively over ranges up to 3000 km, with reception on fixed hydrophones. Analyses of measured propagation losses of these low-frequency acoustic signals in the dispersive channel provide insights into the nature of the propagation and the acoustic channel. Both the CW signals and the arrivals of the impulsive signals are analyzed in terms of transmission loss, convergence-zone structure, source-motion effects, interference structure, and channel characteristics. The systematic variation (internal tides) of the medium and its influence on the interference field are discussed. The state of modeling, both simple and complicated, is reviewed and compared with results of the ocean experiments. Relationships are provided between this work and the broader field of underwater acoustics. Suggested areas for future research are made.

One of the fundamental problems of sonar systems is the determination of the bearings of underwater sources/targets. The classical solution to this problem, the 'Conventional Beamformer', uses the outputs from the individual sensors of an acoustic array to form a beam which is swept across the search sector. The resolution of this method is limited by the beam width and narrowing this beam to enhance the resolution may have some practical problems, especially in low frequency sonar, because of the physical size of the array needed. During the past two decades an enormous amount of work has been done to develop new algorithms for resolution enhancements beyond that of the Conventional Beamformer. However, most of these methods have been based on computer simulations and very little has been published on the practical implementation of these algorithms. One of the main reasons for this has been the lack of hardware that can handle the relatively heavy computational load of these algorithms. However, there have been great advances in semiconductor and computer technologies in the last few years which have led to the availability of more powerful computational and storage devices. These devices have opened the door to the possibility of implementing these high-resolution Direction Finding (DF) algorithms in real sonar systems. The work presented in this thesis describes a practical implementation of some of the high-resolution DF algorithms in a simple sonar system that has been designed and built for this purpose.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.