Transducer with improved velocity estimation accuracy systems and methods

Abstract

A sonar system and method for measuring relative velocity between a transducer and a scattering surface or volume is disclosed. The system utilizes phased array or piston transducers that project acoustic beams in different directions. Each projection consists of multiple sub-waveforms of different center frequencies that are either frequency steered into different directions such that the acoustic beams ensonify different scatterers or sufficiently separated in frequency to obtain independent estimates of velocity. Each received return signal is used to estimate an independent relative velocity between the transducer and scatterers, and the estimated velocities are averaged to reduce the single-ping standard deviation of the velocity error. Different lags may be used in the different sub-waveforms, wherein shorter lags are used to ambiguity resolve longer lags such that the system ambiguity velocity is sufficiently high, and the single-ping variance decreases below what would be possible when only using a short lag.

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