Demonstration of a quasi-monostatic autonomous underwater vehicle based high duty cycle active sonar

The feasibility of resolving target returns within receive signals collected by a continuously transmitting quasi-monostatic, broadband, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) based sonar is explored. Theoretical studies supported by experimental results suggest that it is possible to capture the source-to-receiver coupling response and target scattering with sufficient fidelity during the continuous transmission to enable detection and (potentially) classification processing. Demonstrations focused upon the detection of a bottomed target object at sea using transmit signals with duty cycles of 60% and 100% indicate that such an approach is feasible for a representative AUV-based side looking sonar system operating in shallow water.