Results from a Small Synthetic Aperture Sonar

A Synthetic Aperture Sonar SAS is capable of producing range-independent high-resolution imagery from an array that is small in length. The ability of these systems to operate at lower frequencies while maintaining high resolution has made them useful for mapping and searching large areas. The U.S. Navy through the Office of Naval Research has a history of developing SAS systems for mine hunting. Recently, their attention has turned to these sonars on autonomous underwater vehicle-based AUV-based SAS systems. One such system is the Small Synthetic Aperture Minehunter SSAM. To demonstrate the robustness of this system, SSAM participated in seven sea tests between April 2005 and July 2006. The locations were Panama City, Florida Keyport, Washington Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts San Diego, California La Spezia, Italy and Jervis Bay, Australia. Approximately 300 km of track were been surveyed in these tests. SSAM has mapped areas with bottoms of sand, mud, layered sand and mud, rock, posidonia seagrass, and coral with varying levels of clutter. Throughout these tests SSAM has provided a robust solution for bottom mapping and object detection.