Environmentally Adaptive Sonar Technology (EAST) project report for participation in the Littoral Warfare Advanced Development (LWAD) 99-3 experiment

Abstract

The objective of the Environmentally Adaptive Sonar Technology (EAST) project is to develop approaches to improve shallow water target detection for Navy active sonar systems. The current investigation involves using a time reversed acoustic pulse (TRAP) as a method of real time correction of propagation dispersion of the energy in an active sonar transmit waveform. The approach of the EAST project is predominantly experimentally based in the Naval Postgraduate Schools Advanced Acoustic Research Laboratory (AARL) shallow water tank facility. Computer modeling is also used to extend the experimental results to more realistic environments. The at sea experimental objectives of the EAST project in LWAD 99-3 were two fold: 1) Conduct a feasibility systems engineering test of a TRAP sonar system 2) At sea demonstration of about a 3dB improvement in SNR using a basic TRAP sonar approach over standard match filter active sonar signal processing for a single element sonar system.