SBIR-STTR Award

A new approach is proposed for oceanographic remote sensing with dual use applications in mine hunting, ocean bottom mapping, and sea floor remote sensing. The WEAVER is a sonar system intended to detect, localize, and classify seafloor bottom laying targets, discriminating man-made items from natural ones in the presence of natural clutter; It exploits here tofore overlooked target-physics based characteristics of multi look, multi-aperture return signals from seafloor and mine like objects(MLO) targets.The WEAVER is a synthesis and extension of techniques found inareas including standard and interferometric synthetic apertureradar (SAR/IFSAR), swath bathymetry (SB), monopulse radartracking applications and 3D radar target identification and imaging. In addition, the WEAVER generates on output a unique lyre usable oceanographic data format that greatly increases the utility of acoustic databases by providing both robustness against orientation dependent effects embedded in the data set, and a new paradigm for visualizing the inherent nature of the oceanographic remote sensing data.Commercial Applications:The WEAVER algorithm can be integrated into existing acoustic remote sensing systems as well as radar systems used for wide area searches. Additional military and commercial uses include radar ground target detection/identification, improved ground penetrating radar for unexploded ordinance detection and archeology uses, and forgery prevention in paintings through high precision relief data.

Oceanographic remote swung systems presently confrontan unnecessarily poor tradeoff between resolution and areacoverage rate. These tradeoffs limit the economic viability ofhigh resolution remote sensing and diminish the oceanographiccommunity's expectations of performance. Under Phase I work wehave refined and numerically demonstrated a new algorithm thatuses Reduced Wavenumber Synthetic Aperture - REWSA.The radar community has long used synthetic aperture techniquesto increase both resolution and coverage rate. However, the slowpropagation speed and uncertain acoustics of the shallow waterenvironment have prevented successful deployment Of existingtraditional approaches Phase I work has demonstrated that our newalgorithmic approach sidesteps all significant difficulties andachieves unprecedented resolution without the coverage ratepenalties previously considered inviolate.In Phase II, we propose to reconfigure an existing side scansystem, develop the necessary analysis and acquisition systemsand field an experiment that demonstrates the REWSA concept atperformance levels equal or exceeding existing systems.Potential commercial applications of the research:Oceanographic remote sensing including Mine Hunting. cable laying, salvage and retrieval.