Synthetic-aperture sonar

Synthetic-aperture sonar (SAS) is a form of sonar in which sophisticated post-processing of sonar data is used in ways closely analogous to synthetic-aperture radar.

Synthetic-aperture sonars combine a number of acoustic pings to form an image with much higher along-track resolution than conventional sonars. The along-track resolution can approach half the length of one sonar element, though is downward limited by 1/4 wavelength.

The principle of synthetic-aperture sonar is to move the sonar while illuminating the same spot on the sea floor with several pings. When moving along a straight line, those pings that have the image position within the beamwidth constitute the synthetic array. By coherent reorganization of the data from all the pings, a synthetic-aperture image is produced with improved along-track resolution. In contrast to conventional side-scan sonar (SSS), SAS processing provides range-independent along-track resolution. At maximum range the resolution can be magnitudes better than that of side-scan sonars.