A scheme to analyze the influence of ocean sound propagation on passive sonar target classification and recognition

The time-varying, space-varying, and frequency-varying characteristics of the marine environment severely affect the classification and recognition of underwater passive sonar targets. A scheme to analyze the influence of ocean sound propagation on the classification and recognition of passive sonar targets is proposed. By constructing a marine grid underwater acoustic environment with information such as three-dimensional ocean sound velocity distribution, seabed topography, seabed substrate, and wavy sea surface; setting source and receiver location parameters; and using recorded ship radiated noise samples as the sound source, based on three-dimensional underwater acoustic field calculations, simulations were conducted to generate received ship radiated noise under different scenarios. The impact of ocean sound propagation on the power spectral characteristics of ship radiated noise in shallow and deep water environments was analyzed. Through extensive classification and identification experiments of ship radiated noise samples after marine sound propagation, the influence of ocean sound propagation on passive sonar target classification and recognition was studied. The results show that, after marine sound propagation, the main power spectral characteristics of ship radiated noise are still preserved, but its impact on target classification and recognition is very severe. Building a relatively complete library of ship radiated noise samples through simulation is a way to address the problem of passive sonar target classification and recognition.