Unification of radar and sonar coverage modeling

Radar and sonar are by tradition separate disciplines with different user communities. This situation is about to change as many navies are experimenting with reduced manning concepts. As a result, tomorrow´s sensor operator is likely to monitor and control all available sensors on his own. In this situation operator overload is expected, especially due to less educated and less experienced personnel and the introduction of new and more complex sensor systems. A possible solution is a high level of automation in sensor management and the integration of tactical decision aids. To further assist the human operator, this work aims to unify sensor performance modeling for the complete sensor suite. The radar and sonar equations are compared and combined with a propagation model for complex environments. The analysis of a real-world scenario with both radar and sonar is shown to result in a unified visualization of predicted sensor coverage.