ASA 127th Meeting M.I.T. 1994 June 6-10

4aUW1. Active synthetic aperture sonar: The past 25 Years.

James T. Christoff

Naval Coastal Systems Sta., Panama City, FL 32407

This paper presents a brief description of the active synthetic aperture concept, its advantages and disadvantages, followed by a historical overview from Coastal Systems Station viewpoint. The overview starts in the late 1960s with the initial concept studies, progresses to the simple single-channel systems developed in the mid to late 1980s, and concludes with the present high area search rate, multi-channel, multi-aspect, realtime, motion compensated systems. Images produced by each system will be presented. The paper concludes with a brief description of present SAS efforts at CSS and the most pressing research areas for future SAS development.