The past, present, and the future of underwater acoustic signal processing

• Published in: IEEE signal processing magazine Vol. 15; no. 4; pp. 21 - 51
• Main Author: Vaccaro, R.J.
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.07.1998
• Subjects: Acoustic propagation; Acoustic signal processing; History; Mathematical model; Oceans; Radar signal processing; Signal processing algorithms; Sonar; Underwater acoustics; Underwater communication
• ISSN: 1053-5888; 1558-0792
• DOI: 10.1109/79.689583

This is a collection of articles written by members of the Underwater Acoustic Signal Processing (UASP) Technical Committee. The first article, by D. W. Tufts, deals with the history of UASP prior to 1980. In this period, initial mathematical models were developed and the first experimental investigations of underwater acoustic propagation were performed. It was also recognized during this time that there are many similarities between radar and sonar signal processing. The article by J.P. Ianniello deals with research in passive and active sonar from 1980 to the present. Work in this period included experimental verification of algorithms that had been developed in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. for adaptive beamforming), as well as the development of new approaches, which include acoustic propagation modeling in the design of signal processing algorithms. Such processing is referred to as matched field processing. A common task in passive sonar systems is to estimate the difference in times at which different sensors receive the same signal. Time-delay estimation is a first stage that feeds into subsequent processing blocks. I. Lourtie provides a concise review of work in this field. The article by J.C. Preisig deals with underwater acoustic communications. The underwater channel has several features that make reliable communication a challenging problem. Nevertheless, progress is being made by combining results from ocean acoustic modeling, communication theory, and signal processing. The final article, by J.M.F. Moura, deals with the future of signal processing in the ocean. In addition to considering advances in detection and localization, he deals with new applications such as acoustic tomography, physical oceanography, and synthetic aperture sonar.