Synthetic Aperture Sonar Forward Modeling and Inversion
Abstract
Current and future high-resolution MCM systems such as Synthetic Aperture Sonar are actively being developed. Unfortunately, this development is proceeding in many cases without a solid understanding of how environmental effects might degrade performance or how data inversion can be used to extract information about the environment. While these systems have been largely successful in achieving their goals of producing high-resolution imagery (on the order of square centimeters), there has been little effort in linking scattering physics to both the mean levels and statistics of the resulting sonar returns seen in the images. This type of knowledge is crucial for producing both realistic forward and inverse models. The long-term goals of the present research are to develop and validate physics-based models and inversion tools relevant to current and future synthetic aperture sonar systems. The influence of the properties of the boundaries to the scattered envelope statistics will be examined in detail as will methods to invert system data for environmental parameters. This study will yield an improved understanding of the link between environmental parameters and system factors which contribute to SAS image statistics, as well as models and methods for characterizing, predicting and mitigating environmental effects. This effort may lead to improved methods for environmental characterization (i.e., 'through-the-sensor inversion of seafloor properties), have direct application to performance prediction, and possibly provide guidance for adaptive strategies for speckle reduction based on the operational environment.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA571650
Entities
People
- Anthony P. Lyons
Organizations
- Pennsylvania State University