• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.182-189
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• 2014

This paper proposed a framework of recognition and tracking for underwater objects using sonar images as an alternative of underwater optical camera which has the limitation of usage due to turbidity. In Part 1, a design and recognition method for 2D artificial landmark was proposed considering the practical performance of current imaging sonars. In particular, its materials are selected in order to maximize detectability based on characteristics of imaging sonar and ultrasonic waves. It has a simple and omni-directional shape which allows an easy modeling of object, and it includes region based features as identifications. Also, we proposed a real-time recognition algorithm including edge detector, Hough circle transforms, and shape matrix based recognition algorithm. The proposed methods are verified by basin tests using DIDSON.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.73-81
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• 2018

The quality of side scan sonar images is determined by the frequency of a sonar. A side scan sonar with a low frequency creates low-quality images. One of the factors that lead to low quality is a high-level noise. The noise is occurred by the underwater environment such as equipment noise, signal interference and so on. In addition, in order to compensate for the transmission loss of sonar signals, the received signal is recovered by TVG (Time-Varied Gain), and consequently the side scan sonar images contain non-homogeneous noise which is opposite to optic images whose noise is assumed as homogeneous noise. In this paper, the SSCS (Structural Sparsity based Compressive Sensing) is proposed for removing non-homogeneous noise. The algorithm incorporates both local and non-local models in a structural feature domain so that it guarantees the sparsity and enhances the property of non-local self-similarity. Moreover, the non-local model is corrected in consideration of non-homogeneity of noises. Various experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to existing method.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.382-390
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• 2021

Synthetic aperture sonars as well as side scan sonars or multibeam echo sounders have been commercialized and are widely used for seafloor imaging. In Korea related research such as the development of a towed synthetic aperture sonar system is underway. In order to obtain high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar images, it is necessary to accurately estimate the platform motion on which it is installed, and a precise underwater navigation system is required. In this paper we are going to provide reference data for determining the required navigation accuracy and precision of navigation sensors by quantitatively analyzing how much distortion of the sonar images occurs according to motion characteristics of the platform equipped with the synthetic aperture sonar. Five types of motions are considered and normalized root mean square error is defined for quantitative analysis. Simulation for error analysis with parameter variation of motion characteristics results in that yaw and sway motion causes the largest image distortion whereas the effect of pitch and heave motion is not significant.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 2013

To analyze the distribution pattern of flood sediment deposits near the mouth of Chucheoncheon (river), side scan sonar images and seafloor sediment properties were investigated in the offshore area within about 50 m deep in water. Based on the analysis result of the sonar images, the seafloor of the study area is divided into three areas of basement, sandy-mud, and dispersed flood sediment. The colors of sonar images in each area are represented by dark black, light grey, and greyish black, respectively. The sediment composition in the grey black area shows 33.73% of gravel, 62.88% of sand, 3.37% of silt, and 0.02% of clay. On the other hand, the composition of the light grey area is 10.31% of sand, 56.42% of silt, and 33.27% of clay. Especially the sediment of the grey black area contains the considerable amount of burned plant fragments in black color, which could distinctly be differentiated from those in the offshore. The distribution pattern of the flood sediment deposits suggests that the land-originated detrital sediments seem to be transported from the Chucheon river into offshore along the shore rather than transversely. In conclusion, the longshore current of the study area is probably dominant to affect the spatial distribution of bottom features.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.12-20
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• 2018

Efforts have been made to reconstruct low-resolution underwater images to high-resolution ones by using the image SR (Super-Resolution) method, all to improve efficiency when acquiring side-scan sonar images. As side-scan sonar images are similar with the optical images with respect to exploiting 2-dimensional signals, conventional image restoration methods for optical images can be considered as a solution. One of the most typical super-resolution methods for optical image is a sparse coding and there are studies for verifying applicability of sparse coding method for underwater images by analyzing sparsity of underwater images. Sparse coding is a method that obtains recovered signal from input signal by linear combination of dictionary and sparse coefficients. However, it requires huge computational load to accurately estimate sparse coefficients. In this study, a sparse coding based underwater image super-resolution method is applied while a selective reconstruction method for object region is suggested to reduce the processing time. For this method, this paper proposes an edge detection and object and non object region classification method for underwater images and combine it with sparse coding based image super-resolution method. Effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by reducing the processing time for image reconstruction over 32 % while preserving same level of PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) compared with conventional method.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.212-218
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• 2002

The response behavior of a fish school to an approaching vessel was observed using scanning sonar. The evaluation using six parameters, which signify characteristics of school shape and behavior by sonar image processing, was proposed. Ten fish schools were analyzed and among them, three fish schools were identified for their changing shape, swimming direction, and swimming speed. Moreover, by tracing fish schools on stack of sonar images, these fish schools were seen to exhibit an apparent change of school shape and behavior. Therefore, the evaluation method of fish school behavior using six characteristic parameters indicating fish school shape and behavior by sonar image processing is useful.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.38-43
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• 2017

Many studies about generating images of seabed using active sonar have been carried out but image resolution enhancement is still an important problem. Many methods have been proposed to improve sonar resolution and the approach using narrow beam width is commonly and widely applied to enhance azimuth resolution. Unfortunately, this has technical limitations to reduce the beam width. Therefore, signal processing techniques are essential to achieving higher azimuth resolution when an array with conventional beam width is employed. This paper proposes a new approach that utilizes overlapped beams to obtain higher resolution.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.696-699
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• 2004

A side scan sonar system uses the towfish installed sonars, It is an equipment that search images of the bottom surface of the sea in real time. It is a typical equipment that is related to a sea investigation such as a geological survey, seabed communication cable and power line cable placing repair investigation, fish breeding ground investigation, sea purification, relic and mineral investigation, and mine and submarine search. It used to fined objects and investigate on the seabed surface. But, recently, it is used to sea purification and geological survey that require information of the correct surface of the seabed. So, it needs various filtering technique and image processing techniques development to acquire high resolution image. therefore, this research develops a side scan sonar using multi-beam sensors that supply various information with the fast scan speed and correct high resolution that is not a simple underwater investigation equipment.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.232-241
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• 2014

This paper proposes an underwater localization algorithm using probabilistic object recognition. It is organized as follows; 1) recognizing artificial objects using imaging sonar, and 2) localizing the recognized objects and the vehicle using EKF(Extended Kalman Filter) based SLAM. For this purpose, we develop artificial landmarks to be recognized even under the unstable sonar images induced by noise. Moreover, a probabilistic recognition framework is proposed. In this way, the distance and bearing of the recognized artificial landmarks are acquired to perform the localization of the underwater vehicle. Using the recognized objects, EKF-based SLAM is carried out and results in a path of the underwater vehicle and the location of landmarks. The proposed localization algorithm is verified by experiments in a basin.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.10
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• pp.581-586
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• 2005

The multi-beam side scan sonar system uses the towfish installed sonars, it is an equipment that search images of the bottom surface of the sea in real time. It is a typical equipment that is related to a sea investigation such as a geological survey, seabed communication cable and power line cable placing repair investigation, fish breeding ground investigation, sea purification, relic and mineral investigation, and mine and submarine search. Recently, it is used to sea purification and geological survey that require information of the correct surface of the seabed. Therefore, this research develops multi-beam sensors for a side scan sonar that supply various information with the fast scan speed and correct high resolution that is not a simple underwater investigation equipment.