Novel Approaches for Automated Information Processing of Active Sonar Data

"A crucial problem for tactical active sonars operating in littoral regions is discrimination between returns from targets of interest and those from clutter. A high probability of detection at low false alarm rates is important. Successful development ofnew active information processing methods will greatly improve the U.S. Navy's ability to detect and track quiet diesel-electric submarines in shallow water. ORINCON's proposed approach uses Doppler as the primary discrimination clue. During Phase I, wewill develop new algorithms for space-time processing and adaptive pre-whitening that will significantly suppress reverberation effects and facilitate automation of the detection process. This effort will build on current work for ONR and NAWC onautonomous active sensors. In Phase II, we will develop additional algorithms that focus on automation, demonstrate a limited real-time processing capability in a lab system, and compute sonar performance metrics for the implemented algorithms. Areal-time prototype system on a Navy-specified platform will be implemented during Phase III and tested at sea. Many current and planned Navy towed array processing systems are transition candidates, via the Advanced Processor Build (APB) program, for ourproposed automated active sonar signal and information processing technology. The automated signal and information processing algorithms for Navy active sonar systems developed for this SBIR effo