https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0013837">
 

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

A model has been developed to predict the effect of random seafloor roughness on synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) image statistics, based on the composite roughness approximation–a physical scattering model. The continuous variation in scattering strength produced by a random slope field is treated as an intensity scaling on the image speckle produced by the coherent SAS imaging process. Changes in image statistics caused by roughness are quantified in terms of the scintillation index (SI). Factors influencing the SI include the seafloor slope variance, geo-acoustic properties of the seafloor, the probability density function describing the speckle, and the signal-to-noise ratio. Example model-data comparisons are shown for SAS images taken at three different sites using three different high-frequency SAS systems. Agreement between the modeled and measured SI show that it is possible to link range-dependent image statistics to measurable geo-acoustic properties, providing the foundation necessary for solving problems related to the detection of targets using high-frequency imaging sonars, including performance prediction or adaptation of automated detection algorithms. Additionally, this work illustrates the possible use of SAS systems for remote sensing of roughness parameters such as root mean square slope or height.

Publication Date

9-2-2022

Journal Title

JASA Express Letters

Rights

© 2022 Author(s).

Publisher

Acoustical Society of America

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0013837

Document Type

Article

Comments

This is an open access article published by Acoustical Society of America in JASA Express Letters in 2022, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0013837

Download

Share

COinS