Effect of channel impulse response on matched filter performance in the 2013 Target and Reverberation Experiment

Active sonar performance is determined by the characteristics of the target, the sonar system and the effect of the environment on the received waveform. The two main influences of the environment are propagation effects and the contamination of the target echo with a background. The ambient noise and reverberation are mitigated by means of signal processing, mostly through beamforming and matched-filtering. The improvement can be quantified by the signal to noise ratios before and after processing. Propagation effects can have a large influence on the gains obtained by the processing. To study the effect of the channel on the matched filter performance, broadband channel impulse responses were modeled and compared to measurements acquired during the Office of Naval Research-funded 2013 Target and Reverberation Experiment (TREX). In shallow water, a large time spread is often observed, reducing the effectiveness of the matched filter. TREX data show, however, a limited time spread. Model predictions indicate that this could be caused by a rough sea-surface, which while increasing propagation loss, at the same time increases matched filter gain.