Measurements and analysis of scattering from proud and buried targets in a shallow-water laboratory environment

Finding and identifying objects in littoral waters is of growing interest. Although current acoustic based systems can readily detect objects sifting proud, identification is considerably more difficult. For a buried target, even detection may prove difficult especially using higher frequency systems. These higher frequency systems are limited in range and sound penetration, which makes imaging buried targets extremely difficult. The research presented here is concerned with the use of relatively low frequency acoustics (1 kHz to 50 kHz) to overcome transmission and penetration limitations. Further, we are interested in employing the structural acoustics response of the target for identification purposes