Frequency hopping patterns for simultaneous multiple-beam sonar imaging

This paper describes the design of frequency-hopped signals for a multi-beam imaging system. A frequency hopping pattern is a frequency-coded uniform pulse train. The signal is divided into M time intervals, with each interval assigned a different frequency chosen from a set of N frequencies. A set of N patterns composed of N-1 frequencies can be generated using first-order Reed-Solomon codewords. These patterns exhibit very good correlation properties. In a frequency-hopped multi-beam imaging system, each beam is associated with a pattern and transmits a coded waveform. All N beams can be transmitted simultaneously resulting in a high scan-rate, high resolution imaging device. Furthermore, in the presence of noise and medium spreading effects, a frequency-hopped imaging device performs better than conventional systems by showing better noise rejection and less sensitivity to spreading effects.