Sea-floor characterization related to object-detection performance of sonar systems: A case study

In this study, we use lacunarity maps in order to predict the influence of seafloor characteristics in the object-detection performance of high resolution imagery sonar systems. Three different synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) systems have been used to collect acoustic data. They will be referred as SAS1, SAS2 and SAS3 to avoid drawing a comparison. A test area on the Belgian Continental Shelf, between the Thorton bank and the Goote Bank, is selected based on the long term stability of its physical characteristics. Different objects (exercise-mines and friendly-objects) have been deployed in this area and acoustic data are collected during object-detection trails. Results demonstrate a relation between the difficulty of detecting a target and the environmental parameters, in accordance with other analysis presented in the literature.