Sparse sample matrix inversion with diagonal loading for reverberation suppression

The main problem of active sonar detection is that the reverberation has spatial and temporal two-dimensional coupling characteristic which is similar to clutters in airborne radar. This paper presents a sparse sample matrix inversion with diagonal loading (SSMI-DL) for reverberation suppression in active sonar. The proposed method transfers Pulse Doppler radar STAP processing techniques into active sonar application, which utilizes the inverse reverberation covariance matrix to obtain adaptive weights and avoids singular reverberation covariance matrix with diagonal loading due to limited available received data. Simulation results are provided to verify that the SSMI-DL is more effective for improving slowly moving target detection for CW pulse than the conventional methods.