Advanced Signal Processing and Display Concepts for Airborne Active ASW Systems

Atlantic Aerospace proposes to develop an Active Sonar Display Processor (ASDP) to distinguish between submarine and non-submarine contacts in airborne active sonar systems. Accurate active classification of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sonar echoes is a long standing need for the Navy. Current system performance is based upon an operator viewing the sonar screen and making classifications based upon his experience. For low-frequency active systems with their inherently greater range sensitivity and operating in shallow water, the number of false contacts can overwhelm the sonar operator. The penalties associated with incorrect active classification are great. The ASDP Display Processor will provide significant display features to increase the efficiency of a sonar operator by combining and associating contacts from different sensors and platforms, displaying tracking data for sonar contacts, overlaying bathymetry to indicate likely clutter area, indicating regions of low ensonification at target depths, using icons to indicate classification results and color coding to indicate confidence in classification. This will allow the operator to ignore contacts with high confidence and concentrate on those with low confidence employing single-ping and multi-ping automatic classification clues to aid operator decision-making. Finally, it will allow operators to interact with the display to make final classification decisions.