Methods of estimating allowable motion perturbations in side-scan sonar systems

This document describes the effects of nonideal hydrophone array motion on sonar image quality and derives the allowable motion errors for vehicles carrying side-scan sonar systems. Estimates of the quantity of motion that causes just noticeable sensor performance degradation as well as those that render the sensors useless are derived using two different methods. Using a special resolution target, examples of simulated image distortion resulting from several types of motion are presented. A method for quantitatively measuring the actual image distortion in situ is described.