Coherent Multi-Static Active Sonar LRT

Multistatic sonar technologies are emerging as an important strategy for ASW. Multistatic operations can potentially improve ASW effectiveness in challenging shallow-water environments while allowing critical assets to remain acoustically covert or at a safe standoff distance. The Navy uses multistatic acoustic sensor systems with aircraft and surface ships, in network-centric ASW surveillance missions. Current incoherent systems suffer from high false alarm rates when operating in shallow water. A method of reducing false alarms and not unnecessarily alerting our adversaries is needed. For future multistatic systems, coherent active sonar techniques are being investigated, because of the potential to extract motion target classification clues. Exploiting Doppler in multistatic systems is challenging because of target scattering effects. Increasing the duty cycle results in many potential echoes from the target, and the task of combining these target echoes in the presence of is critical. This project will develop a signal, information and data fusion processing software prototype that will extract Doppler and motion features contained in coherent waveforms. We will use a Likelihood Ratio Tracking track-before-detect approach to optimally combine multiple echoes, in order to form consistent tracks over space and time that discriminate between targets and clutter.