Classification of buried objects using a parametric sonar

Underwater object identification has been of great interest to acousticians (detection of boulders), marines (detection of buried mines), or archaeologists (detection of wreckage). Image and signal processing succeeds in identifying objects lying on the sea bottom, however identification of an object buried in sediment remains complex. The goal of this work is to obtain a complete identification and localization of objects embedded in sediment using adapted technology. The parametric source, whose properties are based on the nonlinear propagation characteristics of water, has many advantages as an acoustic source (high relative bandwidth, narrow beam) which are useful for object detection and classification.