Demonstration of the invariance principle for active sonar

Active sonar systems can provide good target detection potential but are limited in shallow water environments by the high level of reverberation produced by the interaction between the acoustic signal and the ocean bottom. The nature of the reverberation is highly variable and depends critically on the ocean and seabed properties, which are typically poorly known. This has motivated interest in techniques that are invariant to the environment. In passive sonar, a scalar parameter termed the waveguide invariant, has been introduced to describe the slope of striations observed in lofargrams. In this work, an invariant for active sonar is introduced. This active invariant is shown to be present in the time–frequency structure observed in sonar data from the Malta Plateau, and the structure agrees with results produced from normal mode simulations. The application of this feature in active tracking algorithms is discussed.