Digital signal processing for a high-resolution three-dimensional sonar imaging system for autonomous underwater vehicles

In this dissertation, the digital signal processing techniques required for a 3-D sonar imaging system are examined. The achievable performance of the generated images is investigated by using a combination of theoretical analysis, computer simulation and field experiments. The system consists of a forward looking sonar, with separate projector and receiver. The projector is a line source with an 80 degrees by 1.2 degree beam pattern, which is electronically scanned within a 150 degree sector. The receiver is a multi element line array, where each transducer element has a directivity pattern that covers the full sector of view, that is 150 degrees by 80 degrees. The purpose of this sonar system is to produce three dimensional (3-D) images which display the underwater topography within the sector of view up to a range of 200 meters. The principle of operation of the proposed 3-D imaging system differs from other commonly used systems in that it is not based on the intensity of backscatter. The geometries of the targets are obtained from the delay and direction information that can be extracted from the signal backscatter. The acquired data is further processed using an approach based on sequential Fourier transforms to build the 3-D images. With careful selection of the system parameters, the generated images have sufficient quality to be used for AUV tasks such as obstacle avoidance, navigation and object classification. An approach based on a sophisticated two dimensional (2-D) autoregressive (AR) model is explored to further improve the resolution and generate images with higher quality. The real time processing requirements for image generation are evaluated, with the use of dedicated Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips. A pipeline processing model is analyzed and developed on a selected system.