High resolution multi-beam side looking sonar

The conventional side–scan sonars does not ensure sufficient angular and range resolution to detect very small objects with small target strength. Decrease of beam width leads to the increase of angular resolution but requires the decrease of towing speed what means reduction of searched area. Other method of the angular resolution increased is designing multi–beam sonar or sonar with synthetic aperture. The paper presents a design of effective multi–beam side looking sonars with a large angular and range resolution operates with 100 kHz, 200 kHz, 400 kHz and 600 kHz. The sonar, described in the paper, operates with 200 kHz frequency; LFM modulation – 20 kHz and 40 kHz band; array provides 32 elements with d/ë spacing what ensure a shaping of 5 or 9 beams with 0,40° width. The range of sonar is from 250 m to 300 m, the level of side lobes are smaller than -20 dB and level of grating lobes for 5 beams are smaller than -30 dB. The principle of sonar performance and wideband effective processing are presented. Effectiveness of processing depends on beams number and decrease of beams number, together with the range increased, leads to increase of processing effectiveness.