Aspects of parallel processing in sonar

There is a lot of interest in finding parallelism in algorithms, with the implied hope of making some form of parallel machine which can perform the algorithms more effectively than can any other machine. The author considers naval sonars in this light, but tempered by the fact that a new NATO stock number generally costs more than several extra copies of an existing machine. The author briefly describes a typical naval sonar, to fix some terms and ideas. A reasonably general block diagram, with lists of functions, is given. It encompasses small and large towed array passive sets, active and passive main surface vessel sonars, some forms of mine hunting or navigating sonars, and so on. Some details need to be avoided, and not all methods of implementing each chosen algorithm can be described, but the general impression is correct