Buried target detection based on time reversal focusing with a probe source

Buried target detection under the background of strong reverberation in shallow water is a complicated problem. As the target is buried, the echo of the active sonar is very weak and the echo-to-reverberation ratio (ERR) is quite low. In the paper, the technique of time reversal (TR) with a probe source is discussed to detect a buried target. By TR transmission, the sound wave is focused at the target and the ensonification acoustic energy at the target is maximized. By reception focusing, the echo received by each sensor is added coherently and the waveform of the transmitted signal is recovered. Finally, the matched filtering is used to detect the target and estimate the target range. The waveguide experiment provides a practical implementation guideline to apply TR to buried target detection.