Image Processing for Sonar Active Classification

This Phase I SBIR proposal is aimed at developing and assessing the feasibility of Image Processing Techniques to distinguish between submarine and non-submarine in Active Sonar Echoes. Image Processing Techniques have proven to be highly effective in detecting objects in cluttered backgrounds using other sensors such as Synthetic Aperture Radar, Infrared Sensors, and Lasers. The highly reverberant environment associated with Active Sonar in Shallow Water represents a challenging problem of finding a target in dense clutter. The features of the Sonar Echoes will be analyzed using the Image and Signal Processing computer system at Atlantic Aerospace. The proposed technique offers potential for major performance improvement relative to existing methods. In addition this approach offers the potential of implementing these techniques in affordable commercially available hardware. Atlantic Aerospace Electronics Corporation has teamed (as the Prime contractor) with Westinghouse Electric Corporation (as the sub-contractor) to develop an optimum transition of this technology into Surface Ship ASW systems. This team provides the US Navy with the best capability in both fields; Atlantic Aerospace is on the forefront of Image Processing and Westinghouse is the premier supplier of Surface Ship ASW systems to the US Navy. In Phase II we will implement the Image Processing algorithms into a real time system using the VME architecture.