Silent sonar for maritime security applications

Abstract

The disadvantage of active echolocation systems (radar, sonar), from the standpoint of military applications, is the lack of secrecy of action, arising from the possibility of intercept the opponent's sounding signals from long distances, exceeding the systems range. This disadvantage can be reduced by reducing the sounding signal power, (which reduces the intercept range), while increasing their duration. This method is practically implemented in "silent radar" working with frequency modulated continuous wave. Research project on "silent sonar" is currently underway in Gdansk University of Technology. These results indicate clearly the possibility of building silent sonar designed for detecting and locating underwater objects. Sonar so it can be successfully used on submarines for the purpose of navigation and collision avoidance, as well as on other ships and underwater vehicles to search for mines, detection and tracking of divers, underwater vehicles and submarines. In each of these applications the range of detection of sounding signals can be reduced from several to tens times compare to the conventional pulse sonar. At the same time "silent sonar" parameters are the same as for the conventional sonar. The idea of "silent sonar", signal selection, signal processing algorithms and error analysis is presented in the paper. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.