• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.156-166
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• 2024

This paper conducts a study on methods for associating multipath tracks received by a horizontal line array sonar. The horizontal line array sonar introduces conical bearing ambiguities due to its array-shaped characteristics. Target signals are often subject to multipath propagation in the ocean, resulting in errors in target bearing estimation due to these bearing ambiguities. Recent research efforts have been directed toward using multipath tracks to estimate the positions of targets. However, there has been a lack of research dedicated to identifying multipath tracks from the measurements of a horizontal line array sonar. Therefore, this study identifies the conical bearing characteristics of multipath signals based on the result of experiment and establishes criteria for associating multipath tracks. Additionally, Simulations are performed to determine the ability to associate multipath tracks.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.383-391
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• 2014

In order to detect underwater acoustic signals, various SONAR array types have been developed, including towed line array SONAR system (TASS). However, the TASS suffers from performance degradation which is caused by aperture deformation during a turn, because the TASS have a long-aperture array. A parabolic array model for turning TASS have been developed to solve the degradation problem occurred during a turn. In this paper, adaptive beamforming system is developed using the parabolic TASS model to cancel interference signals. The developed beamforming system is based on generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) structure and self-tuning adaptive algorithm.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.10
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• pp.788-796
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• 2016

Bearing and frequency measurements of TMA (Target Motion Analysis) in passive line array SONAR have lower bearing rate and frequency doppler, and are not detected or tracked continuously because of various ocean environments. This is a main reason to effect the TMA performance and it takes a long time to get TMA solutions. We propose the bearing and frequency TMA(BFTMA) using accumulative batch estimation to solve the TMA problem of line array passive SONAR. The accumulative batch estimation structure is based on MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimation) but used accumulative measurements. The accumulative batch estimation is applied for the BFTMA with nonlinear Kalman filter to estimate the target range, speed and course. Simulation and sea data analysis were carried out to verify the performance and applicability of the proposed techniques.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.412-421
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• 2018

The Line array sonar consisting of several hydrophones increases array gain and improves the performance for detecting the direction of the target compared to single hydrophone. However, line array sonar produces the bearing error that makes it difficult to determine the bearing of incoming source signal due to the relation between bearing angle of target and vertical angle of multipath signals. Vertical angles of multipath are varied with the geometry of receiver and target and various underwater environments, therefore it is necessary to consider the bearing error to estimate accurately the bearing of the target. In this study, acoustic modelling was performed to understand the effect of multipath signals on the target signal. The errors of bearing angle estimated from the bottom bounced signals are calculated with several environment. In addition, the expected bearing line, as a function of source-receiver range, compensated for the bearing error is predicted from the estimated bearing angle.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.145-153
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• 2019

Adaptive beamforming methods are known to suppress sidelobes and improve detection performance of weak signal by constructing weight vectors depending on the received signal itself. A standard adaptive beamforming like the MVDR (Minimum Variance Distortionless Response) is very sensitive to mismatches between weight vectors and actual signal steering vectors. Also, a large computational complexity for estimating a stable covariance matrix is required when wideband beamforming for a large-scale array is used. In this paper, we exploit the WBRCB (Wideband Robust Capon Beamforming) method for stable and robust wideband adaptive beamforming of a passive large uniform line array sonar. To improve robustness of adaptive beamforming performance in the presence of mismatches, we extract a optimum mismatch parameter. WBRCB with extracted mismatch parameter shows performance improvement in beamforming using synthetic and experimental passive sonar signals.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.228-236
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• 2014

Towed array SONAR is deformed because it operates in fluid such as an ocean. It especially undergoes significant change in shape as a towing vessel takes a turn. In this case, beam pattern synthesis of the line array is limited, resulting in degradation in quality such as signal-to-noise ratio. This paper presents a modified two-step least squares algorithm based on the two-step least squares method. The shape of the sea-operated line array formation with the towing vessel changing course(angle) was modeled and the algorithm was subsequently applied. While changing course and location of the main lobe in beam pattern was altered, signal-to-noise ratio of steering beam pattern synthesis was analyzed by algorithm (proposed and others). As a result, the proposed algorithm presented improvement in performance by 2dB compared to other algorithms while forming relatively constant beam pattern.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.36-43
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• 2003

Multi-target away signal simulator which can simulate the radiated noises of maneuvering targets in a specified ocean range is an essential equipment for the validation of developed towed array sonar system. This simulator should provide realistic multi-channel signals those are required for beamforming on the signal processing unit of towed away system. This paper describes the overall system configuration and signal synthesis techniques for the target radiated noise. And this paper considers why the time delays between target and individual sensors are caused and how to compensate these time delays to individual sensors output. This multi-purpose target simulator could be used for the training of TASS operators.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.77-83
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• 2000

The previous synthetic aperture techniques have been investigated to increase signal gain, improve angular resolution and peak-to-sidelobe level ratios for towed line array sonar systems. The synthetic aperture method in this paper is performed for conformal array systems by mapping real elements on an axis to control like a linear array. The proposed method for the conformal array performs coherent processing of subaperture signals at successive time intervals in the beam domain via FFT transformations. This was confirmed by the simulation results and compared to the results from use of the synthetic aperture technique under the conformal array.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.177-183
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• 2019

In this paper, we proposed an application method of ICA (Independent Component Analysis) to passive line array sonar to separate interferences from target signals in low frequency band and compared performance of three conventional ICA algorithms. Since the low frequency signals are received through larger bearing angles than other frequency bands, neighboring beam signals can be used to perform ICA as measurement signals of the ICA. We use three ICA algorithms such as Fast ICA, NNMF (Non-negative Matrix Factorization) and JADE (Joint Approximation Diagonalization of Eigen-matrices). Through experiments on real data obtained from passive line array sonar, it is verified that the interference can be separable from target signals by the suggested method and the JADE algorithm shows the best separation performance among the three algorithms.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.163-169
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• 2020

The asynchronous bistatic sonar needs to estimate direct blast arrival time at a receiver to localize targets, and therefore the direct blast arrival time estimation error could be added to target localization error in comparison with synchronous system. Direct blast especially appears as several peaks at the matched filter output by multipath, thus we compared the first peak detection technique and the maximum peak detection technique of those peaks for direct blast arrival time estimation through sea trial data. The test was performed in a shallow sea with bistatic sonar made up of spatially separated source and line array sensors. Line array sensors obtained the target signal which is generated from the echo repeater. As a result, the first peak detection technique is superior to maximum peak detection technique in direct blast arrival time estimation error. The result of this analysis will be used for further research of target tracking in the asynchronous bistatic sonar.