Multi-ship Sonar Bistatic Automatic Active Localization

The opportunity of interest is the introduction and application of a bistatic tool set for both surface and submarine Mid-Frequency (MF) active sonar systems to enhance anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability in strike group or coordinated surface and submarine ASW operations. The ability to localize threat submarine forces in a battlefield scenario by judicious application of bistatic capability in both surface ship and submarine sonar systems provides important performance benefits to the ASW kill chain. Such leveraging provides a significantly increased ASW capability beyond simple additive value. Achieving these capabilities requires a clear understanding of the information exchange hurdles that must be undertaken at each stage of the process from design and implementation of the underlying search concept to critical bistatic timing, orientation and localization information. An algorithmic approach to a parametric evaluation of these critical parameters will be developed. A principle evaluation metric of the algorithm will be the resultant bistatic detection Area of Uncertainty (AOU), a value to be determined at each step of the parametric approach. As bistatic capabilities are developed and implemented, the capability can be efficiently and rapidly transitioned among ASW sonar systems via the common processing development of the AxB process.