Time-domain compressive beamforming with prior information for active sonar single-ping reconstruction

Area of Science:

• Acoustics
• Signal Processing
• Ocean Engineering

Background:

• Accurate target reflectivity field reconstruction is crucial for active sonar target detection and identification.
• Conventional beamforming methods struggle with limited resolution and reverberation interference in single-ping reconstruction.
• Existing methods often fail to provide high-fidelity target reflectivity fields in complex underwater environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel Time-domain Compressive Beamforming with Prior Information (TCBPI) method for single-ping active sonar target reflectivity field reconstruction.
• To enhance resolution and mitigate reverberation interference in sonar imaging.
• To achieve accurate target reflectivity reconstruction even in challenging, reverberant conditions.

Main Methods:

• Developed a Time-domain Compressive Beamforming with Prior Information (TCBPI) method utilizing sparse data representation.
• Incorporated prior echo waveform information into the sensing matrix for range and angular super-resolution.
• Proposed a two-stage reweighted method for adaptive estimation of reverberation level, combined with iterative reweighting.

Main Results:

• The TCBPI method achieved range super-resolution and high angular resolution in monostatic active sonar single-ping reconstruction.
• Demonstrated effective reverberation suppression, enabling accurate target reflectivity field reconstruction.
• Validated performance using both simulated and sea trial data, showing significant improvements over conventional methods.

Conclusions:

• TCBPI significantly outperforms conventional beamforming and single snapshot compressive beamforming for active sonar single-ping reconstruction.
• The proposed method offers a robust solution for high-accuracy target reflectivity field reconstruction in complex reverberant environments.
• TCBPI provides a valuable advancement for active sonar target detection and identification systems.