Performance Evaluation of a 3-D Sidescan Sonar for Mine Countermeasures

This paper describes an evaluation of a 3-D sidescan sonar system, the Ping DSP 3DSS, for mine countermeasures (MCM) applications. Testing trials were performed over seabed and moored mid-water targets, with the mid-water targets being the focus as this is an area where the conventional sidescan sonars typically used in minehunting survey can perform poorly. Several aspects of performance of the system are discussed, with concepts drawn from MCM practice, hydrography and synthetic aperture sonar performance assessment. The 3-dimensional nature of the sonar output data products, while making it difficult to apply conventional MCM performance metrics, allow for very strong ability in detection of the mid-water targets used in the testing.