USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Robert C Manning

Robert J McDonald

Jo Ellen Wilbur

Lisa B Tubridy

A method is provided to compress and display received data from a toroidal olume search sonar (TVSS) in terms of horizontal range. For any TVSS receive beam having a horizontal component projection that is equal to or greater than a selected horizontal range, the data values occurring at that selected horizontal range are averaged to form a compressed data value. Range dependent weight factors are applied during the averaging process so that the effects of surface and bottom reverberation do not bias the compressed data value. The compressed data value can then be displayed as a function of horizontal range for a series of sonar pings in order to provide a time history.

Image conversion for a scanning toroidal volume search sonar

An apparatus and method for beamforming for a toroidal volume search sonar. onar array vehicle motion is used to reduce reverberation by fixing beams geometrically in space to prevent beam contact, prior to a specified range, with the sea surface or sea bottom interfaces. Reverberation is further reduced by creating a composite beam from one scanned beam containing the target dominated by surface reverberation and another dominated by bottom reverberation. A correlation and averaging procedure is applied to the two scanned beams to further reduce the reverberation in the composite beam. To further reduce reverberation, the two beams selected for correlation and averaging processing are chosen such that the number of common elements associated with the two beams is a minimum within a given angular separation.

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Panama City Beach, FL, United States of America

Robert C Manning