A novel efficient normalization technique for sonar detection

In practical sonar signal processing the background normalization is one of the key operations to ensure steady detection performance. In this paper we propose a novel efficient normalization technique for narrowband detection in passive multibeam sonar. The proposed multistage normalization is demonstrated to be not only efficient but also fast, which makes it very attractive for practical sonar systems. Alternative normalization techniques are also considered and compared to the suggested one using simulated and real data.